


Meteor Seeds

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Aftermath of the Calamity, Angst, Bits of existential horror, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, In a sense, Inspired by Bastion, Post apocalyptic fairy tale, Rebuild the world, Romance, Semi-Alternate Universe, Short Chapters, things get better... slowly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 40,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24272083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: Semi-AU. Cloud wakes up to the aftermath of the calamity and doesn’t know how to put the world back together without her.Inspired by Bastion, no knowledge of Bastion needed to read.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 224
Kudos: 163





	1. The End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Drawmeacrumble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drawmeacrumble/gifts).



> This AU is a mix of FF7 with storylines inspired by the game Bastion. You don't need to know anything about Bastion to read this story. Each chapter will consist of 500 – 700 word chapters because I can get wordy. The idea was proposed on the Cloti server and just took over my brain, Drawmeacrumble said to just write something with Cloud and Tifa so I went off.
> 
> I know I said I wouldn't be back with a new fic for at least 1 - 2 weeks, but this is written for Jay/Drawmeacrumble, who is the 2nd person to ever support me via caffeine as a regular financially, and the 1st person who I don’t know in RL to do so. Thank you so so much, I’m always blown away that you’re supporting me. 
> 
> This will update daily and have about 30 chapters. Feel free to wait till the entire fic is posted before reading, no pressure :)
> 
> The theme song for this fic is The Civil Wars's cover of "Dance Me to the End of Love."
> 
> Also, no cover art (yet) as I literally just wrote this now so... =D

When the calamity appeared in the sky—a blazing alien rock that promised to destroy everything—trying to be a SOLDIER, patrolling Wutai, becoming a hero, none of that mattered anymore. Cloud abandoned his post before his superiors could say anything, and he stole an airship back to Nibelheim.

The town was the same as it always was. He had planned to grab his mother and Tifa (and maybe Mr. Lockhart if Tifa insisted) and just fly, for as long as possible, maybe hijack a rocket, but spend as much time with them as possible. It didn’t matter that Ma and Tifa hadn’t answered his letters for years. It didn’t matter that he was writing to a void. He just had to find them.

And yet, and _yet_ … no one in the town knew who he was.

Cloud nearly killed the old lady who took up residence in his old house. He had no idea what was happening. The calamity was coming closer and closer every day. On his intercepted radio signals, he could hear his superiors trying to stop people from abandoning their posts. They didn’t know if they had a week or a month or three days left.

Finally, the threatened victim in his house, the _imposter,_ the _thief,_ whimpered and stuttered something about the only real Nibelheim survivor left living in Midgar, running a bar called Seventh Heaven.

Cloud dropped the victim and ran.

 _Seventh Heaven_. Tifa and Cloud used to look up at the stars together at night, when Mr. Lockhart wasn’t watching, and talk about the hazy trails of the night, the soft white glows like gentle clouds carrying the stars away, the possibilities of heaven.

‘I think there has to be lots of heavens out there,’ Tifa had told him, ‘because if heaven was all the same, that’d be boring. I’d want my heaven to be like this, just being with you, Cloud.’

But as always, he’d been too shy and stupid to say anything back. He had thought she was humouring him, teasing him, but now, _now_ , maybe… maybe Tifa was trying to tell him something, something he never dared was true because he was strange and weak and foolish.

The bar had to be Tifa’s. Tifa had to be alive. He couldn’t continue on, even if the world was going to end soon, if she wasn’t present in this world. He didn’t think there would be a heaven without her, he didn’t think the lifestream itself could survive the calamity. Not if what the SOLDIERs whispered about Jenova was true.

Cloud flew like a maniac, landing illegally on the roof of a building and jumped down, threatening the first person he saw for the location of the bar.

The calamity was getting closer, its light blocking out all stars and sun.

Cloud ran and ran, ignoring the protestor signs, ignoring the strangers crying and hugging each other.

Nothing mattered until he saw that sign in Sector 7, until he saw the bar doors boarded up, until he ripped apart the door and stormed inside, nearly stopped by a punch towards his face. Cloud moved out of the way, saw her, saw her for _real_ , so grown-up, with lovely long hair and those vivid red eyes that widened when they saw him.

“… _Cloud?_ ” she breathed.

He couldn’t stop staring at her.

“…Tifa.”

That’s all he could say.

The meteor was upon them.

And the only thing Cloud knew how to do anymore was reach out and hold her.


	2. The Waiting

Outside, he hears screaming, shouting, praying, laughing, crying. Every known human sound, every known human reaction, all of it saturating the air as if filling the void with every humane sound that will ever _be_ will stop the calamity. As if screaming is proof of existence and will stop you from becoming nothing.

But inside Seventh Heaven, amongst the rows of upturned chairs and tables, meticulously scrubbed floors, all he can hear is Tifa’s breathing.

Her hands bunch up against his chest. Have her hands always been this slender yet strong? He saw the punch she was going to throw, she knows how to hurt people so she can escape.

He breathes her in.

 _That’s my girl_ , he thinks, even though Tifa’s never belonged to him at all… not like how he belongs to her.

“Are you… are you _real?_ Are you a ghost?”

Cloud shakes his head, then holds her closer, hoping that she’ll let him.

She does.

Her breaths shake. “You never wrote back… I thought you were _dead_ … They told me that you didn’t exist…”

Cloud’s brow furrows. “But I—” He _did_ write. So many times. So many letters. He didn’t even care if she wasn’t writing back, as long as he could put his feelings into the envelope and seal them off, send them away.

His feelings never left him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says quickly, “if this is a dream or a nightmare. You kept your promise. You _came_. You’re _here_.”

The light from the meteor, brighter than the sun in its red haze, shines through the bar’s doors and boarded-up windows, the red setting them both aglow like fire.

“…I’m here,” his voice cracks, because he didn’t keep the promise, not really. He can’t save her from this. He can’t save her from the end of the world. He’s just Cloud, and stupidly human, and a mere trooper after seven years in Shinra’s army, and all he can do is _hold_ her. “I’m here, I’m _here—_ ”

She’s crying, the tears glistening from the meteor’s light, as if the drops of her red eyes have become ruby rivers that he can touch.

The meteor roars—the fire, the rocks surrounding it—coming closer and closer to the ground. It’s so bright and dark at once.

There’s so much he wants to say, so much he told her over letters that he wants to spill out _now_ in the last few seconds they have yet, and yet there’s nothing. But he can’t let things end before he tells her, can’t let things end before she _knows_.

So he kisses her, desperately, as if he could consume her and bring her with him inside his heart, as if his body would be enough to save them both from flame and agony and the calamity that devours all—

“Don’t let me go,” she whispers between kisses, so beautiful in this red light.

The meteor hits.

Cloud throws all of himself into covering her, into protecting her, praying, praying, praying that this is enough and that she knows that he loves—

:

Pain, shaking, Cloud rolling over on top of her so the rubble falls on him, green, green, green, lashing out all around them and—

Nothing.


	3. The Silence

In his dreams, he used to watch Tifa and his mother walking away from him and no matter how much he ran, he could never get closer to them. In _this_ dream, his mother is gone. Only Tifa remains, her face so close that their lips could touch, her mouth moving in these silent cries.

No, Tifa should never cry.

He tries to lift his hand, tries to wipe the tears away.

But as always, in his dreams, he can never reach her.

:

His eyes pry open slowly, protesting in bursts of terrible pain as Cloud coughs up dust and groans. His sides whine at him as he rolls over, tries to move his limbs. Slowly, his fingers obey him, closing in a fist and unfolding out. His eyes blink again, shedding off the dust, as Cloud surveys his surroundings.

Darkness. Rubble everywhere. Distant fires. The sky dotted with so many stars, stars he hasn’t seen since nights at Nibelheim. In Wutai, even when Shinra’s army invaded the cities, the SOLDIER camps with their mako-powered lights blotted out all stars.

And silence. Just… drifting silence, the kind of silence that you hear in winter, lifeless and cold but somehow infinitely worse. No crickets. No bustling. No birds in the distance, no _wind_. Just… dead silence. Just… Cloud’s own breathing.

He jerks up, his hands searching.

No, _no_. Where’s Tifa? Where’s everyone? Why is he here, alone? Is this hell? It must be hell if he was dragged here without her instead of with her.

Cloud gets up, ignoring the pain laced in all his limbs. All around him, there’s rubble… and in the distance, countless stars in the void of space. Did Midgar always look like this…?

Doesn’t matter. He has to find Tifa. If this is hell, then he’ll fight the devil if he can see her again.

Cloud stumbles forward, towards anything.

His footsteps echo, the sounds reverberating all over him. He can’t see any bodies or signs of blood or anything. Just… darkness. Space.

He runs faster.

“Tifa?” he starts to say. “ _Tifa?!_ ”

His voice echoes for eons and eons.

Faster, faster, he moves past the rubble until—

It just ends.

The path is gone, just… a vast amount of space. Cloud looks down, seeing nothing but space everywhere. He’s… on a floating piece of land, what’s left of Midgar, stranded in space and somehow breathing in atmosphere, and is this hell after all? Or is he really the lone survivor of Midgar, stuck on a tiny piece of it, drifting off into space until his air runs out?

No, no, no, no—

Then he hears it.

Blessed sound.

The sound of someone digging frantically through rubble, the sound of someone crying in frustration at her lack of strength.

“Tifa!” he spots her along the edge of this floating piece of city, digging through the rubble of what was once an apartment building.

“Please, please…” she digs.

“Tifa!” he puts a hand on her shoulder, tries to stop her from making her hands bleed anymore with all the rubble she’s moved.

Her face whips towards him, her eyes widen. “You’re awake.”

He looks down at her arms, so many scratches and bruises… dirt and pain…

“Did you… did you _dig us both out?!_ ”

She looks down at her hands.

Cloud has so many questions, so much confusion, things that he’s sure Tifa doesn’t know the answer to. Instead, he lifts his hands up and slowly rips off pieces of his shirt to wrap each finger in, each finger that kept them both alive.

“Let me help,” he says quietly, when Tifa seems to protest. “I’ll help you dig whoever you need out, I’ll _help_ you, so _please_.”

 _Let me do this for you_ , he doesn’t say.

As he carefully wraps the rest of her wounds in the remains of his shirt, tears start to fall.

They both cry in silence.


	4. The Green

By unspoken agreement, they both dig furiously into the rubble.

Every once in a while, their fingers brush against each other, Cloud’s lingering on her bandages, making sure they’re still tied, Tifa’s feeling for his pulse. They dig until Cloud’s fingers get scabs and Tifa’s bandages begin to rip. They dig until they reach nothing but more rock and rubble, and Cloud has to choke out, “Stop.”

She shakes her head.

“Tifa, _stop_.”

Her hands numbly try to lift another piece of concrete.

“ _Tifa_.”

She looks up at him, tears dipped in crimson.

Cloud can’t hold back then. His hands fly to hers, cradling them in place.

“…There’s no one here.”

She opens her mouth, then swallows. “…I know.”

This time, her sobs stab and echo through the void, the screams of a precious instrument dismantled piece by piece. Her tears rip apart into his heart and linger there, etching their pain against his own.

He can’t bear it.

He throws his arms around her without a thought, holding her tight.

“Everyone’s _gone_ ,” her voice trembles. “We’re the only ones, _why are we the only ones?!_ ”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he whispers gently, stroking her hair, trying to remember what the guys in his troupe said about comforting their lovers. He hates that he’s secretly glad they survived, even if no one else did, even if it causes her pain.

“Marle… Andrea… Johnny… Jesse… I should have gone out to look for them…”

“No,” Cloud murmurs into her ear. He saw the chaos out there. Tifa was right to board up the bar and stay hidden. “You did the best you could…”

She shakes, her sobs wrenching out entire shudders throughout her entire being, until she simply goes numb against his arms, her breathing ragged and tired.

“…I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I know crying doesn’t solve anything. You’re stuck here with me too…”

“No, that’s not true!” Cloud used to think tears didn’t solve anything. He hated himself for being weak. But the friends that he made showed him differently. _War_ showed him differently. All humans cry eventually. All humans have a breaking point. “You’re strong, Tifa,” even if he hasn’t seen her for years, he knows that as well as he knows his own heart. “And there’s no one else I’d rather be stuck with.”

She lets out a muffled laugh, weighed down by her tears. Looking up at him, and wiping away tears, she whispers, “When did you get so good at comforting people?”

He stares down at her, still in awe that they’re here, that he’s with her.

“…A guy can change,” he whispers back.

Her cheeks go pink, and she looks away, stepping back awkwardly. His heart aches at the loss.

“…We need to figure out what’s happening… We should be _dead_. There should be _bodies_. What’s _happening?_ ”

Right. Cloud quickly observes his surroundings.

“…It’s strange…” he narrows his eyes, “it’s like we’re floating on pieces of the planet… but that can’t be… I mean, where’s the sun? And the moon? All I see is darkness… and distant stars…”

“When… when things were ending… when the meteor hit… do you remember seeing green?”

Cloud frowns. “Yeah. I think… I think I did, flashes of it… like mako…”

Tifa nods. “Do you think that was…”

She trails off.

“What?” Cloud stiffens, scanning the area for any threats. Were there monsters that survived? Are they coming?

Tifa grabs his hand, “Look!”

In the distance, like a pulse, a jolt of green light spreads through the void, spreading out into little branches like an ancient tree, stretching out and lighting up other distant floating pieces of land in the void. Then again, another pulse, more green light, stronger this time… stretching out and out until the green light stays constant as a river, staying alight and burning strong enough for Tifa and Cloud to see an expanse of green currents connecting all the little floating islands of land together.

Cloud thinks he sees the infamous lines of the mountains of Cosmo Canyon on one floating island… and the houses of a little village on another. A rocket shaped silhouette farther off must be Rocket Town… and another island with floating water around it must be Costa Del Sol. All these floating pieces of the planet, still held together with stretched out threads of green currents…

Of lifestream.

With the void of space lit up in such haunting green, Cloud can’t help but reach out his hand to Tifa’s. She takes it.

They stare out at the branches of lifestream, still trying to hold the planet together, in awe.

:

And then they look down.

And then they see the screaming multitude of faces within the lifestream, pawing their luminescent green hands towards Cloud and Tifa.


	5. The Ghosts

Cloud pulls Tifa back immediately, his hand going to the dagger on his waist as he points the weapon down at the outstretched hands of the dead.

They reach out at him, their faces stretched and gaping, but they can’t reach farther than the lifestream that confines them, as if they’re blocked by a glass bubble. They paw at the air with their soundless cries for help and Cloud can’t help but pull Tifa closer to him, stepping slowly away from the edge, as if not seeing the dead will erase them.

The bright green glow from below, and the tendrils of lifestream connecting the other pieces of Gaia together, beg to differ.

“…We need to leave,” Cloud says immediately. He thinks that the piece of Midgar that they’re on might be attached to the building where he landed his airship. Maybe the airship can fly them between different pieces of Gaia and they can find supplies, shelter… assuming that the airship can even fly between the floating islands. Is there atmosphere connecting the islands too? Or just windless space? If it’s the latter, he and Tifa might be trapped here…

“Wait,” Tifa pulls away from him, and Cloud tries to pull her back. “Just, _look at them_. They’re in _pain._ ”

"Tifa wait!"

She kneels along the edge and leans down.

“Don’t touch them,” Cloud stops her. “What if they hurt you?!”

“…I don’t think they want to hurt us.”

“… _Really?_ ”

“Oh, just _look_. I think… I think _they’re the ones holding Gaia together_. But they’re not strong enough, and it’s _hurting_ them.”

Cloud feels his stomach twist. He peeks over the edge again and that’s when he really _sees_ what the faces are like. They’re… screaming, not because they want to hurt anyone, but because they’re pleading for help. All of their hands seem outstretched to the floating piece of Midgar itself, as if their hands are the invisible threads holding the island in place, rather than any threat to him and Tifa.

The thought makes him sick. The dead should be happy, moving on in their afterlives, not trying to save the living.

“Do you think… they saved us?”

Tifa bites her lips. “I… I think so? Maybe? _Something_ did. I’m just not sure why it was just… us.”

Cloud doesn’t know either. But he’s glad of it, even if it meant everyone else died. He’s glad it’s him and Tifa.

“Well,” he stands up, “there’s nothing we can do for them. We should get moving. Find shelter. There’s an airship—”

“We should help them.”

“What.”

Tifa nods to herself, her posture becoming more stable. “Yeah, we should help them. We need to figure out how to put the world back together. Maybe if we go to the center of the lifestream… maybe we can fix things…”

“Tifa,” Cloud shakes his head, “the world is _broken_ , there’s nothing left! How could we fix things?”

“Well, we need to _try_. I don’t want the souls of my parents, _your_ parents, suffering for us!”

He can’t respond to that. He could never respond well to her tears or her anger. When Tifa used to ask him if he was ignoring her, he’d run just so he wouldn’t have to look at her face. If he looked at those upset red eyes, he’d cave. He always caves, just as he always returns to her, despite not being ready to.

Cloud doesn’t want to be like this, arguing with her, when they should make the best of the rest of their lives… together, hopefully. He’s not a fool to believe that the kiss meant anything other than a desperate attempt to feel _something_ at the end of the world, but he’s not going to leave her either. He’ll take what he can get.

It’s just… the world _ended_. Cloud was powerless to stop it, they both were. Now Tifa wants to _fix_ it?

She’s talking to the wrong guy. Cloud can’t be that guy. He doesn’t even know how to fix the rift between them.

“Please Cloud,” Tifa takes his hand. “Think of your mom.”

No, he can’t. Ma has to be alive. Ma’s not dead. He just hasn’t found her yet, like he found Tifa.

Tifa seems to sense his distress because her lip trembles.

“Please… I can’t do this without you.”

Just like that, Cloud’s will crumbles. He sighs, unable to look her in the eye. “Alright…”

Her relieved smile is a balm against his soul. It always has been.

He turns towards the direction of the airship; it has to be around somewhere. “We’ll need to get the airship quickly… Figure out where we’re going first. We should probably check the islands one by one, there might be other survivors… maybe we’ll find my Ma too…”

Tifa frowns. “Cloud—”

Whatever she says gets cut off by a terrible scream, worse than the wordless cries of the dead below them.

They both whip around towards the direction of Seventh Heaven’s ruins and see a grotesque creature, with its skin peeled off and extra limbs coming from its shoulders and sides. It seems to spot them, screeching and limping towards them, bloodied gossamer wings trailing from its back…

“What is that?!” Tifa breathes.

Cloud has no idea. He’s seen every monster from Wutai to Midgar, but _nothing_ like this. Whatever it is, it isn’t natural. Nothing natural could look like _that_. He has no sword, no gun, only a dagger, and Tifa by his side.

He grabs her hand and shouts, “ _Run!_ ”


	6. The Calamity

The green haze of the lifestream casts long shadows on all directions, shadows that seem to leap out and grab at them, as they run along the edge of Midgar. The _thing_ , for it can’t even be called a monster, rumbles after them, its shrieks tearing at the muscles holding together Cloud’s throat.

“There’s an airship—somewhere—keep an eye out,” Cloud says quickly. He nearly trips over the rubble in their path, he does his best to keep Tifa upright too. Shit. Why didn’t he get the next mako injection to become a Second Class SOLDIER, why did he hesitate?

Another crash behind them. The shrieks follow.

“There!” Tifa lifts their interlocked hands up, pointing at a distant shape on a pile of rubble. The airship, somehow still intact, hopefully still air worthy.

They scramble forward, turning and twisting over bits of fences and steel and cement. The closer the _thing_ gets to them, the more the air fills with the stench of burnt up flesh.

Just as they get within a meter of the airship, almost close enough to open the doors, Tifa’s hand is yanked from his and all he hears is her scream, “ _Cloud!_ ”

“Tifa!” he turns around, sees that the _thing_ has one of its grotesque arms wrapped around Tifa’s leg. She twists in its hold, trying to punch at its grip and swing her leg back but it only dangles her up, lifting her towards a mouth lined with layers and layers of teeth.

Cloud doesn’t think, he charges ahead, tackling the thing by the waist.

It drops Tifa, but its limbs flail as three arms grab Cloud and attempt to _pull_.

Cloud screams, just as Tifa jumps up to punch the _thing_ in its mouth.

The _thing_ groans, falling back and doesn’t have time to attack as Tifa relentlessly punches it again and again, following with several kicks and uppercuts. She moves like a goddess of war awoken from slumber, merciless in her strikes, and Cloud feels his mouth go dry.

But it’s not enough.

The _thing_ twitches under Tifa’s attacks, until suddenly Cloud sees an eyelid open on the thing’s body… and another… and another… all of the eyes glowing a terrible red, the same red as the meteor… brighter and brighter…

 _Oh_ , Cloud thinks, _the meteor brought this thing._

“Tifa, get down!”

Her eyes meet his in shock, an unreadable conversation, hopefully translated, coming between them, as Tifa quickly jumps back to his side.

The _thing’s_ eyes all dart towards Tifa and Cloud before they’re all both engulfed in a terrible red light.

:

It’s as if the mind of a terrible being, darker than the devil, strong as a god, has touched both of theirs. It’s knowledge and the eating-of-knowledge and all of it tries to speak into his mind— _Jenova, planet eater, virus, devourer, let me in_ —all these words come into his head and he knows, he _knows,_ that this thing won’t stop, will never stop, until everything and everyone is dead, and then it will come for the next planet and the next and the next and—

:

Tifa and Cloud fall back on the ground, staring at each other in shock, as the _thing_ before them shrieks once more.

Ghosts. All of these ghosts, the people that Tifa must have known in Sector 7, appear before them, blocking the _thing’s_ vision of them, tying the _thing_ to the ground. The _thing_ howls and struggles, making the ghosts that touch it dissipate, but still more ghosts come.

The ghost of an older woman appears before them, her face stern as she looks at Cloud, but soft as she looks at Tifa.

Tifa’s breath hitches. “…Marle?”

The ghost smiles sadly at her. ‘Go,’ she seems to mouth.

Tifa shakes her head.

The ghost looks at Cloud.

‘Go,’ she mouths again.

Cloud looks at the _thing_ , at the ghosts breaking into thousands of little green lights as they try to stop it, he looks at Tifa, frozen on the ground.

His hands clench and his eyes shut tight.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Then he takes Tifa and runs.


	7. The Guide

Cloud doesn’t remember much of what happens next.

Somehow, he manages to get the airship doors open. One moment, he’s sitting Tifa down near the front of the ship, in the comfiest seat he can find on short notice, the next, he’s pleading with her to put on a seat belt, that she can’t do anything for Marle. Then, he’s at the controls, brain going blank at the worst time as he tries to remember which levers and buttons will lift the airship up.

The shrieking from the _thing_ outside doesn’t stop, somehow worse within the airship, its screams reverberating all throughout the metal walls. From the front of the ship, Cloud can see that there are very few ghosts left to stall the _thing_ , and that Marle’s ghost is furiously yelling at him to take off.

Shit, shit, shit, maybe this lever!

The lights go out—definitely not that lever. Cloud flicks the lights back on. He can’t panic now, Tifa _needs him!_

But the fatigue, the shock, all of it just crashes down on him, and no matter how much Cloud wants to, _he can’t move_ , he just… _can’t_. The _thing’s_ voices, the things that it said to him and Tifa, all of it seems so hopeless.

A bandaged hand stays on top of his, warm and kind.

Cloud’s eyes shoot over to Tifa, pressed against him with a determined resignation in her. She looks at him, the way she did when she told him that she’d get stronger the next time he returned, a statement she said to him quickly before kissing him on the cheek and running away. Back then, he went on the train to Midgar, to SOLDIER, in a daze, unable to think of anything but that kiss.

“Show me what to do,” she says.

Like a puzzle clicking back in place, Cloud moves their hands together to the panels.

They don’t look at the ghosts dying again for them, or at the _thing’s_ limbs lunging for the tail of the ship. They don’t look at anything but forward on the dashboard, on the void between them and the next island.

The airship takes off.

They soar up and up until what’s left of Midgar is but a black speck against the lifestream’s many branches, until they’re surrounded by ashy clouds that blend in with the void. From here, Cloud and Tifa can see the entirety of Gaia, interconnected by a network of lifestream branches, all connected at a center that’s too bright to look at, almost as bright as the missing sun.

Below them, the speck of Midgar seems to flicker once, then twice… then vanishes into nothing.

Tifa stifles a cry.

It’s gone, like it never existed.

Worse still, they see something red as blood slowly making its way up the lifestream, like an infection, erasing the green…

They don’t speak for a very long time. Cloud doesn’t offer any comfort besides squeezing Tifa’s hand, feeling her pressed against his side. He doesn’t have any words left, not for what they both just saw.

“…You heard it too… didn’t you?” Tifa murmurs against him, likely to fill the silence.

He nods. He wishes he hadn’t heard it.

“It’s going to try and eat the lifestream… absorb it all… Destroying our planet wasn’t enough for it… _Jenova_ … What a stupid name Shinra gave it…”

The way the _thing_ had repeated that name, _Jenova_ , had been so mocking. Cloud doubts that this planet-killer has a name at all.

“We… we need to stop it, somehow. There has to be a way to kill it,” Tifa starts.

Cloud wants to laugh. “We don’t even know where to go.”

From the look of things, everywhere they try to go will eventually be eaten by that _thing_ , by Jenova. Out there on the other floating parts of Gaia, there might be more Jenova-spawn too…

“Wait…” Tifa turns in his arms and points out the window. “Do you… do you see that?”

Cloud follows her finger, squinting as he surveys the void, and sees a glowing figure in green. The figure looks masculine, strong in build, with a familiar sword on his back. From the side, the figure seems to be smiling, his arm pointed towards the west, towards the floating island of Cosmo Canyon.

Then, the figure vanishes.

“…Zack.”

Tifa stares at him, “You know him too?”

“He…” Cloud’s legs feel weak, “he was my friend… he got assigned to a long-term mission, shortly after I last saw him, so I haven’t heard from him in years…”

“Oh,” Tifa says, oddly quiet. Well, quieter than what Cloud’s seen so far in both of their grief. “Then… we should follow him.”

Cloud’s mouth feels too dry, everything too much, too dark, too silent.

Zack is dead, everyone’s dead—

No, he has to focus.

“Okay,” Cloud turns the airship.

They follow.


	8. The Distance

For a while, they travel in complete silence, neither of them ready to leave the other’s side despite how tired they both are. The ghost of Zack, if it is even Zack Fair, flickers in and out, always so far away but never straying far from their sight.

Eventually, it’s the sound of both their stomachs gurgling that breaks them out of their stupor. Tifa looks away from him, blushing, while Cloud wants to hit himself for forgetting that they haven’t eaten in hours. He doesn’t even know how much time has passed since they woke up. The end of the world feels like eons ago.

“There’s some food stocked in here…” Cloud mumbles. He hadn’t had time to explore the airship when he stole it. He grabbed a medium sized ship, knowing that he could pilot it himself despite it being intended for a four-person crew. If the airship broke down in midflight or they had a serious medical emergency, Cloud wasn’t sure if they could survive. Later, he needs to teach Tifa how to fly the ship herself… just in case…

Quickly flicking on autopilot, and hoping that the possible-Zack-ghost will keep heading towards Cosmo Canyon, he gestures for Tifa to follow him.

The airship is like the ones he’s operated with his regular troupe though Cloud was always assigned as a co-pilot or put on cleaning duty. His friends handled the mechanical issues and med support. Cloud was just glad he never had to cook.

Down the hall is a small kitchen, cramped but filled with supplies to last a year. The rations Shinra gives out aren’t very appetizing but they’re better than nothing. The ration bars have enough nutrients in them and it looks like there’s running water…

“Here,” Cloud hands Tifa a ration bar and some vitamin tablets. “Sorry it’s not much. We’ll have to make a pit stop somewhere and get more fresh supplies and water. These ration bars can last decades so we should get other food options just in case. I can probably do some hunting if there are still animals around…”

Tifa doesn’t respond, only slowly unwrapping the ration bar as she settles next to Cloud by the kitchen table. The bags on her eyes are deeper than ever, and despite the grime and wounds all over her, he can’t stop staring at her, soaking her in.

When she nudges him with a water bottle, he blinks at her dumbly.

“Here,” she offers it to him, “you should drink. You must be thirsty.”

“Yeah…” he agrees, but for a different thirst entirely.

He takes the drink and they continue eating in silence.

Cloud searches for something to say. Even among his friends, he’s introspective, preferring to observe conversation and join in when needed. But his friends have never made him feel insecure about not speaking, they don’t mind how sullen he can seem sometimes. Cloud can even crack a joke and smile with them. He’s grown.

And yet around Tifa, he feels fourteen and awkward again. Always waiting for her lead, always tripping over his words and actions, unable to move forward unless she saves him first.

She keeps doing that. Saving him, that is.

(She probably doesn’t even need him—)

No. Shut up mind. This isn’t the time for that—

“It’s so quiet… just the two of us in this big ship,” she speaks up.

Cloud nearly jolts back in his seat. “Uh. Yeah! But don’t worry! I can make enough noise for the whole ship! I’ve got all kinds of stories from my time in Shinra! Do you want to hear about the time Tidus dyed my hair blue?”

She gapes at him, and for a moment, Cloud wants to kick himself for being awkward again. He came on too strong. She doesn’t want to hear about his stupid stories when she’s worrying about how to save the world and how to stop Jenova, she doesn’t want to hear about _Cloud_ —

And then she laughs, so delighted and free, so much like the girl who used to pull him out from sitting alone on the porch steps before her mother died, so much like the girl who’d shoot paper airplanes to his window, like the girl who used to play so loudly on the piano because she wanted to become one with the music.

Cloud falls for her all over again.

She wipes a few tears from her eyes, tears that make him want to stand in alarm and run back to the Jenova-thing and stab it, until she smiles at him. He forgot how much he loved her smiles, the real ones, not just the ones she plastered on to the boys who bothered her.

“Thank you, Cloud. I feel much better. I’m glad that… at the end of things, you came. _Thank you_.”

“I…”

His words choke in his throat. He wants to tell her that he’s sorry. He should have come sooner. He wants to tell her that he’ll be here for the rest of their lives if possible. He wants to say that in the end, he should be thanking her.

Instead, he puts on his bravest face, the kind Zack used to make to cheer him up, and says, “Always.”

Tifa’s smile goes soft in a way that Cloud can’t describe, the kind of soft that he wants to melt in, that the sweetest dreams are made of, the kind of soft worth fighting for, and the silence stays.

The distance between them both is still there… but the silence no longer hurts as much.

:

After their impromptu lunch, Cloud instructs Tifa on how to work the pilot controls herself. He shows her the parachutes and emergency buttons, as well as where the medkits are. Cloud manages to find a few weapons stashed on the ship, a long sword that he feels comfortable with, and a baton for Tifa. She frowns at the weapon, asking if there are any fighting gloves available, and Cloud makes a note to scavenge for some fighting gloves on their next pit stop.

It isn’t long before they decide to land the airship on a floating piece of rock, that has nothing special on it, for the night so they can conserve fuel. The little rock is far enough from the red light, that is the Jenova-thing, that Cloud feels comfortable staying there for a few hours.

The distant ghost of Zack lingers too, as if sensing their need to rest. Cloud wonders why Zack hasn’t come closer to them, why Zack hasn’t tried speaking to him like Marle’s ghost spoke to Tifa…

As he stares out the window, Tifa hovers by him hesitantly. “Do you…” her eyes flicker to the distant ghost of Zack, “want to talk about him?”

Cloud turns away. “No. I’m fine.”

He hasn’t seen Zack in years. It shouldn’t hurt this much.

“What about you?” he focuses on her. “Do you want to talk about… Marle? About… Sector 7?”

Tifa’s features close off, her arms reach up to hug her elbows. “I… I’m okay.”

Like hell she is.

But Cloud doesn’t push her. He doesn’t have a right to, when they haven’t seen each other in seven years.

“Alright then… well… I can take first watch. You go to sleep. There’s some beds upstairs. They’re not that comfy but you can use some of the uniforms as extra pillows if you want…”

She bites the edge of her lip and Cloud can’t help but watch the motion. “If you’re sure…”

He’s sure. She needs the sleep more than he does after the fighting she did.

Tifa lingers for a moment longer before she nods. “Good night, Cloud.”

He swallows. “Good night, Tifa.”

They stare at each other for a little longer before Tifa turns around and leaves. He watches her go, until her feet disappear upstairs, and then he puts his face in his hands and internally screams.

:

Cloud’s done millions of watch duties before. Hard not to, when he’s a mere grunt soldier. He used to do squats during that time, or chat with Wakka and Tidus. If he was assigned with Auron on watch then he’d do a few stretches and listen to Auron correct his posture. If he was alone, he’d write letters in his head to Tifa and Ma. If he was alone, he used to stare up at the stars and wonder if Tifa was looking up at them too.

He used to think that these feelings would go away. Just a childhood crush, nothing more. Surely Tifa had changed. Surely he had changed too. And yet, seeing her again, none of those changes matter. He’s back to being awkward. She’s back to being so unreachable.

They feel like the only two people left in the world and yet Cloud always feels as if she’s slipping through his fingers.

This watch duty is different in this newly silent world. He stares at Zack’s distant figure. He tries not to think of the last time he saw Zack.

“…You can’t be dead,” he murmurs to the glass. He can’t imagine Zack dead, Zack who’s more alive and vibrant than anyone he’s ever met. His first friend outside Nibelheim.

How stupid. He wonders how long he and Tifa will repeat that to themselves, that the ones they love can’t be dead… in a world that’s so very lifeless.

Suddenly, Cloud can’t bear looking out the window, at the void and broken world. He can’t bear thinking of _any_ of it. None of it feels real when he _knows_ it all happened to him just several hours ago. His footsteps move, he doesn’t bother denying them.

He finds himself in front of the bunker, hand raised to knock, to hope, and—

She opens the door, eyes wide as she looks at him.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He sees the same emotions mirrored in her eyes too, and for a moment, she and Cloud aren’t distant. For a moment, they’re of the same mind.

_I don’t want to be alone right now._

Her hands reach out to cup his face, his hands go to her waist holding her close. She walks him to the tiny bunk and he curls himself around her, back to the door, as if that will protect them both. And without a word, she closes her eyes and rests her head against his chest.

They don’t sleep for a long time, afraid of missing the other’s breaths.

But when they do, for a moment, the world doesn’t feel so broken.


	9. Her Story

Cloud never knew what to say to Tifa’s tears. He wasn’t good with comfort, with making people better. He remembers that Ma used to cry too, alone by the kitchen table at night. Ma had so much pain in her that she never shared, pain that Cloud blamed his absent father for. Ma was like Tifa, in the sense that she’d smile for him while her eyes always betrayed her sadness.

When Tifa used to curl up against her piano and cry against her knees, Cloud always heard her. He knew that was impossible, when there were windows separating them and Tifa’s tears were always silent, but his heart heard her. He ached with her. He never knew how to tell her that.

He still doesn’t.

All he knows is that it’s her voice that wakes him, a gentle humming that gets choked up with tears. She used to do that too… hum every chance she got, like a bird calling out for another to answer her. But she’d always stop when she saw other people come near. Perhaps that was also why Cloud never talked to her much. He just wanted to treasure her singing.

As he slowly opens his eyes and feels her damp tears against his shirt, he says nothing, only carefully moves his hand over her hair in a steady motion. Ma used to do that for him, before he stopped crying over scrapes and bruises. Tidus told him that girls needed that, to see that you were steady.

She stiffens against the touch, and Cloud almost stops, until she relaxes once more, pliant against him.

When her breathing calms down, Cloud murmurs, “What was that song called? It was…” _pretty, breathtaking, soothing,_ “nice.”

Her breaths tickle against his collarbone. “Midgar Blues… Customers used to play it all the time on the jukebox and I just picked up the tune… Aerith thought it was too sad for me but Marle would—”

She stops.

Hesitantly, Cloud presses further. “Marle would…?”

Tifa doesn’t speak for a long time. Just when Cloud thinks he should try to change the subject, Tifa says softly, “Marle would… jeer at the song. Said the singer was terrible. She’d try to convince me to sing it instead, thought that I’d put a better spin on it. She used to catch me humming the song under my breath and she was convinced that I’d sing it best.”

“…Sounds like a lady with taste.”

Tifa laughs. “Maybe.”

“Definitely,” Cloud insists. “We grew up together, so I’ve heard you sing before. You’re more than good.”

Her hands press closer around him.

“Thank you…” her voice chokes up. “Maybe… maybe I’ll try singing that song one day. For you. And for her. When all this is over.”

If they survive when it’s over, neither of them say.

“What was she like?” Cloud says quickly, not wanting to think about Jenova or the meteor or ghost-Zack. “What was Midgar like? I didn’t get to live there for very long before I was put into training. You mentioned an Aerith too… and others, before…”

Before the _thing_ attacked them.

Tifa huffs against his shirt, as if to hide a smile.

“Feisty. Blunt. Always spoke her mind. She looked out for me, gave me a place to stay after… after Nibelheim. She made sure I got a decent job, taught me how to haggle with different vendors and how to sew my own clothes. Midgar is so different from Nibelheim, sometimes I didn’t know how to react to the crowds, but she made Sector 7 feel safe for me. She was like… the grandmother I never had.”

“I’m sorry.” He’s never hated two words so much before. Those words can hardly express the depths of loss that Tifa’s experienced.

“You know what’s funny?” Tifa laughs. “At the end of it all, I didn’t want to see anyone. I was afraid that I’d break down and cry. I didn’t want to watch them die. I’d already been abandoned so many times… and Marle wasn’t in the same Sector, she was caught up in Sector 5 to visit her sister. I thought that at least I wouldn’t have to see her go…”

“Hey,” Cloud whispers, “it’s okay… I think she would have understood…”

“I know. Still makes me wish I would have gone out to find her at the end of it though.”

Cloud has no idea what to say to that. He has his own regrets, of course, about not finding Tifa sooner. If he'd known the meteor was coming sooner…well, he wouldn’t have wasted so much time. But when time was up, Cloud knew he had to find her, silly crush or not. He just… _had to_.

He doesn’t tell her this.

“What about Aerith?” he asks instead. “Who was she?”

Tifa’s voice lights up. “My best friend. She and Marle really saved my life when I came to Midgar. You would have loved her, she had a way with plants and she’s so bubbly. She and I helped each other out a lot… Last time I saw her, well, I had to get her out of a tight spot and I couldn’t go with her. I had to stay behind so she could go… I… haven’t heard from her since. I think she’s—well, it doesn’t matter. She’s gone now.”

Everyone is.

“What about you?” she says quickly, “What have you been doing in the last seven years?”

“Well…” Cloud says carefully, “still trying to get into SOLDIER, not that it matters anymore… I was just a grunt anyways, I only just qualified for mako treatments but by then I didn’t really want to take them…”

Taking the mako treatments would have meant leaving his friends, and by that time, he hadn’t wanted to.

“You’ve got the mako eyes though…”

“Yeah, well, you have to do the preliminary mako tests at some point, but further treatment depends on how well you adjust to the exposure. I… did not react very well the first time. So I just have… slightly enhanced strength and the bright eyes. I can’t outlast a First-Class SOLDIER though, they’re on another level. Or… they were.”

“…Zack was First-Class.”

“Yeah,” Cloud shifts over so he can look down at her. “How’d you know?”

She averts his eyes. “He was there… in Nibelheim. When everything happened.”

Everything?

Cloud frowns, “Tifa, I’ve been meaning to ask you, about Nibelheim… Why—”

A bright green light, appearing in the room, stops him.

Ghost-Zack, tapping his foot and pointing at his left wrist for the time.

If Cloud doubted that this was Zack Fair before, he doesn’t now. The surprised look on ghost-Zack’s face when he sees them wrapped up in each other, and the leer and the wink, convince Cloud.

“Oh my— _get out!_ ” Cloud flushes, throwing the pillow at ghost-Zack.

The pillow smacks against the wall, phasing through ghost-Zack’s shimmering green figure. Ghost-Zack only shrugs and taps at his wrist again. The message is clear. Time to go.

Tifa and Cloud exchange glances. The Jenova-thing must be coming close.

“Okay, we’re getting up, but you better tell us where we’re going.”

Ghost-Zack only shrugs and vanishes. Only Zack could make being a ghost a strange annoyance.

But the laughs Tifa makes as they get ready to drive the airship makes Cloud forgive him (only a little.)

He can ask Tifa about Nibelheim later.


	10. The Rest Stop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for your support!!! I know how painful it must be to get little bits and pieces of the story day by day. This chapter is a little longer than usual ^0^ Also, we've reached 1/3 of the way!!! Hooray!!!!
> 
> AN: OMG I ACCIDENTALLY POSTED THIS EARLY INSTEAD OF SAVING AS A DRAFT. OH WELL I GUESS. EARLY UPDATE FOR YOU ALL, RIP ME
> 
> AN: For my own purposes, the Huge Materia are in different locations than they were in canon.

The Jenova-thing has crawled up more of the lifestream, like an infection, changing the comforting green light into a red that makes Cloud want to vomit. It’s moved from what used to be Midgar towards the rest of the Eastern continent. Cloud estimates a week before Junon and Kalm are swallowed up too. They’ll need to hurry if they want to get to Cosmo Canyon, if that’s even where ghost-Zack is leading them to…

Ghost-Zack seems more responsive now. From far away, he’ll pause and wait for the airship to come closer, instead of flickering away. It’s as if the closer they get to wherever they’re going, the more stable his form appears. But that might be just Cloud’s imagination, wishful thinking…

Tifa’s decided to take up inventory of all of their supplies so they can be better prepared on calculating what they need to scavenge for. She’s also decided to read different manuals lying about on how to fix up the ship.

“I won’t be as good as real mechanic,” she shrugs, “but it’s better than nothing.”

She checks up on Cloud and they take turns piloting the ship. Cloud attempts to look at the manuals too… Both of them will need the knowledge in case the other gets injured. He hates reading through these things when watching someone fix up an engine has always helped Cloud learn more. Books make the simple things more complicated than necessary but it’s not like he can ask anyone for help…

When he hears Tifa gasp, he bolts up, sword in hand. “What is it? Are we being attacked?”

Eyes wide, she shakes her head. “No, nothing like that. Come see!”

He takes one peek out the window and he nearly drops his sword in awe.

Outside, humongous globes of water hover in the void, spheres of ocean life just swimming back and forth, unaware that the world has broken. The giant spheres of ocean are like snow globes, little windows into life under the sea, somehow floating in the void. Tiny little droplets of water hover around the ocean spheres like little rings of stars, sparkling in the tiny little strings of lifestream holding the ocean spheres in place.

He didn’t think that there could be anything beautiful amidst this broken world, and yet, here he is, jaw dropped and speechless.

“I can’t believe this!” Tifa sets the controls on autopilot, hovering as close to the observation window as she can, her hands pressed up against the glass, as if she could touch the fish on the other side. “We’re not the only ones that survived…”

Her face, lit up in the glow of water and life, just radiates joy.

“…Beautiful…”

“Huh?” Tifa glances at him.

“The fish, I mean. The ocean,” Cloud says quickly. “Hey, is that a turtle?”

Thank goodness there’s an actual turtle hovering close to where they’re standing.

“Oh my stars, it _is!_ ” Tifa steps closer to it, waving her hands at it. “Hey little guy,” she whispers, “we’ll do our best not to fly through this bit of ocean, okay? So keep swimming… we’ll fix things… right?”

At Tifa’s words, Cloud blinks at her dumbly. He’s still not used to this, them talking to each other so normally. He used to clam up at the very sight of her, and yet here she is, teasing him and asking for assurance.

“Yeah,” he nods, stepping over so their shoulders brush, putting his hand against the glass too, where the turtle stares at them. “We will.”

At the sight of such life, it’s easy to believe.

:

Between the two of them, they manage to navigate through the expanse of ocean spheres without hitting any water or accidentally killing any marine life. Cloud _never_ wants to do that again, the stress of accidentally hitting a whale or a dolphin or that turtle that kept following behind them made his eyes want to bleed.

“Bye bye, little guy,” Tifa waves sadly as they finally reach the next floating island. The little turtle, hovering at the edge of the ocean sphere, seems to sulk as the airship flies farther and farther away.

“We could…. go back for it? Get a tank and keep the turtle there.” Cloud has no idea how to care for a sea turtle but if it makes Tifa happy, he’ll get her all the sea creatures she wants.

Tifa shakes her head and gives a small smile. “No, that’s sweet, Cloud, but we shouldn’t take the turtle from his home. No one should ever be without their home. He’ll be happier in the ocean, where he belongs.”

There’s a melancholic colour in her voice, something that Cloud finds he wants to chase away the longer they’re together. Quickly, Cloud grabs her hand and says, “Look! Costa Del Sol! I’ve never been but… it looks more intact than Midgar did.”

It’s true. While the buildings in Costa Del Sol still look ruined, there are still intact walls and infrastructure, more areas to walk through without tripping over rubble. No one’s there and they don’t see any bodies, but there’s likely lots of supplies inside.

Tifa frowns. “Why do you think this town stayed intact but Midgar didn’t?”

“…Not sure. Maybe… some places were more stable, better protected from the meteor? Like… places with more lifestream support…”

“How does that even work?”

“Honestly, no idea. Seems like magical bullshit, but let’s roll with it and get some supplies. Don’t wanna stick around in case that _thing_ comes back.”

Tifa nods.

“You’ll like Costa Del Sol,” Cloud rambles, “it’s Tidus’s hometown. He said they had great salted fish. We should be able to find a lot of cool things…”

And maybe Tidus too…

They land the airship on the floating remains of Costa Del Sol and begin exploring. Ghost-Zack hovers in the distance again, sitting crossed legged in the air, waiting for them. Neither of Cloud or Tifa are willing to separate, even if it might be more efficient, afraid of losing sight of the other. They agree to search through the shops first, uncomfortable with raiding empty houses, even if no one lives in said houses anymore.

The shop still has boxes of flour and rice, oil and salt, canned goods and soap. He and Tifa load the items up to the ship and then explore the next few shops. They find different clothes, stocking up on the warmer ones in case of colder weather, and plenty of armour and weapons. Cloud gifts Tifa with a pair of fighting gloves sheepishly, apologizing that he couldn’t buy it, and Tifa laughs, putting them on.

She tests them out, throwing a few punches in the air and nods. The way she fights is so fluid and deadly, a grace that Cloud could watch for hours.

“Thanks Cloud. I feel… a bit lighter with these on.”

“I know what you mean.” He felt the same when he found the swords on the airship. While Shinra trained him in rifles, he still prefers the sword.

The most useful item they find is the materia. Neither of them want to trade blows with the Jenova-thing again, so they both agree that fire and lightning materia are probably their best bet for maintaining distance from the Jenova-thing in combat. They also stock up on a few defense materia too though there isn’t a lot of variety in a costal town.

Cloud can’t help but feel… empty… when they can’t seem to find any trace of living people. Have those people joined the lifestream too, like Marle did? Like Zack?

His buddy Tidus was on leave when people found out about the meteor. He had been visiting Costa Del Sol to see his sweetheart Yuna. Did either of them escape?

Suddenly Ghost-Zack appears in front of him, and Cloud stumbles back with a muffled scream. “What the hell, man?! You can’t just appear like that, give some warning next time!”

Ghost-Zack gives him a deadpan stare, pointing at his mouth, which makes no sound.

“Uh… right.”

Then Ghost-Zack points frantically in the distance.

Cloud’s brow furrows. Charades has always been his worst game. “Uh… you want me to follow? No? There’s something we need to pick up?”

Ghost-Zack nods furiously.

“Okay, then why didn’t you say so?”

Ghost-Zack throws his hands up in the air and makes several strange gestures.

“You… wanted us to stock up… first?”

Another nod.

“Right… well, lead the way, I guess?”

Making sure to tell Tifa where he’s going, he follows Ghost-Zack to the center of the town, where a stone fountain is still intact. In fact, there’s water gushing out of the fountain… glowing green water.

Ghost-Zack gestures to the glowing jewel in stuck in the fountain’s center column and mimes pulling it out.

“…Really?” Cloud deadpans. “You want me to step in freaky glowing water to steal a jewel?”

Impatient hand gestures.

“Okay, okay, the things I do for you, I swear…”

If Ghost-Zack turns out to be a secret demon or something, Cloud will flip his shit.

Hesitantly, he steps into the fountain, his foot dipping against the glowing green water and hisses back when an assault of images hits him— _meteor hitting, people screaming, mom I’m scared, got to find my daughter, no point anymore, at least I’m with her in the end_ —memories of the people of Costa Del Sol, their last thoughts bleeding into his, so closely that Cloud thought he _was_ them, for a moment.

He hasn’t felt that since the preliminary mako tests, since he threw up and was assigned to two weeks bed rest because he was incompatible. Two weeks of piecing himself back together.

“Zack, what the hell?!”

Ghost-Zack has the decency to look apologetic. The damned man actually _shrugs_ and mouths, ‘I forgot?’

Wanting to swear up a storm for his own idiocy in blinding trusting his not-dead-friend, who apparently forgets that living people can’t touch pure mako, Cloud only closes his eyes and mutters. “It’s fine… I’ll think of something else…”

Maybe he can reach for the jewel with his sword? Or use some mako to blast the fountain apart…?

Suddenly he hears an eerie but familiar shriek.

He and Ghost-Zack exchange shocked glances. They both look across the ocean spheres, where the Jenova-thing from Midgar is still slowly making its way to Junon. If the Jenova-thing from Midgar is still on the Eastern continent then that means…

“There’s another one…”

Another shriek, coming closer.

Cloud doesn’t think of the fountain or the jewel or Zack’s odd request anymore.

He bolts towards Tifa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I miss an opportunity in having Tifa make a dolphin friend? Yes, but in my defense, I adore sea turtles SO MUCH. Any names for the sea-turtle-friend would be greatly appreciated.


	11. The Friend

More shrieks in the distance make his feet sprint faster.

“Tifa!” he cries out, eyes darting back and forth for any sign of her. The shrieks get louder, closer. “Tifa, where are you?!”

Ghost-Zack keeps popping up in front of him, gesturing to the fountain, and Cloud tries to fan him away. Despite his hands moving like windshield wipers, Ghost-Zack keeps rearranging himself whole and scowling.

“Look, I’ll get the stupid jewel after I find Tifa. We need to get moving—”

A scream, the sounds of battle, of blows being traded, and _fire_ , stops Cloud in his tracks.

There, by the edge of the town, not far from the airship, Tifa darts and dodges attacks from _five_ humanoid looking things. They’re different from the Jenova-thing in Midgar, with the same amount of limbs as a human being, and eyes opening all over their skulls. Each of them seems to have a red glowing orb stuck on their bodies. Some of them have the red orb stuck on their skulls, others have it stuck in their torsos or hands. Oddly enough, some of them have weapons on, though they don’t seem to know how to use those weapons…

Tifa’s punches emit fire and lightning, thanks to the materia, but the Jenova-things are faster than the one at Midgar, scrambling about with their twisting limbs like spiders jacked up on pure speed. She manages to hit one of the Jenova-things, its spine doubling backwards in what should have been a fatal blow, but the Jenova-thing wounds back up like an elastic band, lashing back at Tifa.

Immediately, Cloud’s there, his sword chopping the damned Jenova-thing in half.

Or… it _would have_ … if the sword didn’t get jammed, _stuck_ , in the Jenova-thing’s waist.

“What the shit!” Cloud tries to pull the sword out, but the Jenova thing begins to twist and spasm, tendrils of its flesh beginning to crawl up the sword towards Cloud’s hands…

“Duck!” Tifa yells, and without thinking, Cloud does.

She kicks the sword away, and it flies in the air, landing by the airship, thankfully without any of the Jenova-thing stuck on it, and just as quickly she throws a fire punch towards the Jenova-thing’s face.

The fire lights up, surging towards the Jenova-thing and it howls when the heat hits it. Thank Gaia, they’re not fire resistant.

“I’ll cover you,” Tifa says, as she begins throwing fire at the other Jenova-things scuttling around her. “Grab your sword!”

Cloud doesn’t need to be told twice, dashing over to his sword, dodging the stray Jenova-thing that escaped Tifa’s blows. They’re so damned _fast_ , Cloud ducks its attempt to grab him, rolling on the ground and then grabbing the sword to block its next attack.

He falls back into a familiar rhythm, breathing and stepping as Auron taught him, and swings his sword again. This time, Cloud activates the fire materia and the sword doesn’t get stuck in the Jenova-thing, only slices at its front.

The Jenova-thing doubles back, howling in pain. Cloud doesn’t hesitate, swinging his sword again in what should have been the end of it except…!

The Jenova-thing has a necklace on, a necklace with a familiar spiral blue ring…

A memory: Tidus dragging Cloud out during leave, insisting that Cloud help him pick out something for his sweetheart Yuna, Cloud being no help at all, Tidus finally whooping in excitement over a jewel that looked like the ocean, Tidus insisting that all couples should wear matching rings regardless if they’ll get married or not—“ _It’s a promise ring, you know? A promise to try to be together, whatever that means. I hope she’ll like it_.”

That ring. That same ring.

“…Tidus?”

The Jenova-thing, the not-Tidus, the abomination only howls at him. But even then, Cloud can’t move.

“Tidus!” he murmurs as the _thing_ lunges at him, his sword useless at his side, “It’s… it’s really you… you’re…”

“Cloud, look out!” Tifa screams, trying to run towards him, despite the three other Jenova-things surrounding her. No, she shouldn’t worry about a failure like him…

Ghost-Zack appears between the two of them, shielding Cloud, and glowing brighter than the sun.

The Jenova-thing, Not-Tidus, shrieks, unable to bear such light, and Ghost-Zack turns and silently shouts, ‘ _Run!_ ’

Cloud doesn’t know how, he doesn’t know when, but somehow he and Tifa get into the airship. The light that Ghost-Zack emitted was enough to blind the other Jenova-things too. Somehow, they get the ship flying, hovering just above Costa Del Sol before Cloud whirls on Ghost-Zack, who now _because-why-the-fuck-not_ has decided to ‘hang out’ with them in the ship instead of being mysterious and stupid and not-dead, and yells, “Was that him?!”

Tifa stills, “Cloud, what are you talkin—”

“Was that my friend Tidus?! Are those things out there… Were they human, like us?!”

Ghost-Zack hesitates. He makes a gesture.

“Look, it’s not that complicated, just _tell me_.”

Ghost-Zack’s shoulders slump down. He nods.

Cloud stares at him in disbelief.

“Was it Jenova? Those little red orbs stuck to them… Did Jenova do that? Turn them into… into _those things_?”

Again, all Ghost-Zack can do is nod. He looks so tired…

Someone’s laughing hysterically. They should stop. Wait. No. It’s him. It’s Cloud. He’s the one laughing.

“Cloud,” Tifa stares at him helplessly, frozen.

This is so stupid. This whole end-of-the-world bullshit is so damn. Stupid!

He won’t forgive Jenova. He won’t forgive it for turning Tidus into an abomination. If he can’t fix the world, he can very well destroy Jenova for good.

“That jewel, the one you wanted me to get out of the fountain. Will it help?”

Ghost-Zack looks like he’s struggling to say more. Cloud doesn’t care how complicated the answer is, he just wants an answer. In the end, Ghost-Zack settles for a nod.

Clouds turns to Tifa. Whatever’s in his eyes, he tries to soften it, because he doesn’t want her to be afraid. She should never be afraid of him.

“Can you get the airship just above the center of the town? I need to grab something.”

Tifa’s gaze darts back and forth between Ghost-Zack and Cloud before she nods. “You can trust me.”

Always, he thinks.

They only have one shot at this. The Jenova-things and Not-Tidus are circling closer to them, following the airship wherever it goes, waiting… Cloud can see more Jenova-things coming closer to the town…

When Tifa gives the signal, Cloud moves towards the exit.

She dries the airship to the center of the town and opens the latch. Immediately, Cloud jumps out of the airship, a rope secure around his waist, and stabs the fountain with his sword.

The fountain cracks open, mako beginning to spill out of its spire, while the Jenova-things dash towards him like starving animals at the sight of prey.

Cloud grabs onto the jewel, pulling it out of the fountains and yells for Tifa to pull the airship up.

The airship hovers off, higher into the void, as Cloud dangles from the exit.

As the ruins of Costa Del Sol get smaller and smaller, he can feel the mutated eyes of Not-Tidus staring back…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FFX fans please don't murder me, things will get better, I swear. Also we WILL be getting plot answers soon... in 2 or 3 chapters...


	12. The Song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all the lovely support! I'm going to take a break until Monday so I can focus on writing my other Cloti protect and so I can get more sleep. I've been suffering from severe eye strain so I need to limit my screen-time tomorrow. See you all on Monday!!!

Cloud cradles the jewel to himself when Tifa helps him back into the ship. Her hands linger on his back as she scans him for injuries. He tries to focus on her, instead of the other memories flashing through his mind, the remnants of mako soaking into his hands, instead of Not-Tidus trying to kill him.

“Breathe with me, Cloud, _breathe with me._ ”

He tries to do that, breathe with her, in the same steady rhythm. Her hand against his feels warm and solid, he never wants it to go. Her eyes, bright red stars in his haze, help guide him back to normal breaths.

By the time he can really see her, really focus on his surroundings again, they’re both slumped against the floor, foreheads touching.

Hearing his breathing stabilize again, Tifa slowly smiles at him. “You back with me?”

Her breaths tickle against his lips. His mind flashes back inappropriately to the first and only time they kissed, before everything ended and—

He moves back, determined not to look at her. “Yeah. I… thanks. _Thank you_. I needed that…” He fumbles with the strange fountain jewel for a moment, looking down at it.

There’s a pause, but eventually Tifa steps closer to him, studying the jewel as well.

“It’s an odd colour… and it’s _glowing_. Is it materia?”

Cloud frowns. Come to think of it… the jewel’s light is very similar to the energetic hum of materia. But the colour and feel of this jewel is unlike any materia he’s seen before. Perhaps it’s a rare materia, something useful for fighting back against Jenova. Perhaps that’s why Ghost-Zack wanted him to get it…

Speaking of Ghost-Zack… he’s hovering nervously by Cloud and Tifa, still flickering in and out like a dying lightbulb, but very present on the ship.

“So?” Cloud holds up the jewel. “Are you going to explain what this is?”

Ghost-Zack looks very much like he wants to, but there’s only so much a voiceless ghost can explain. Instead, he mouths reluctantly, ‘Be Patient, Cosmo Canyon’ as if that will be the end of that.

“Bullshit, use charades or something, just _give us some answers!_ Why is this happening?! Why did Jenova do that to Tidus? I don’t understand anything!”

“Cloud—” Tifa’s eyes go wide.

“No, _don’t_ ,” he doesn’t know what he’s telling her not to do—not to speak or not to touch him or not to be _kind_ —but he knows that as soon as she does it, he’ll break, “Zack has to explain things. We deserve answers!”

A pale glowing hand, translucent green, tries to touch his shoulder… but it only passes through, cold and empty.

Ghost-Zack looks like he wants to say _so much more_ , but he can only mouth, ‘I’m sorry.’

Cloud suddenly feels so sick.

“No…” Cloud steps away. “ _I’m_ the one who should be sorry…”

He can’t be here around Ghost-Zack or Tifa, he can’t let them see him being so pathetic.

He drops the jewel by Tifa’s feet and runs to the bathroom to throw up.

He doesn’t leave for a very long time.

:

Tifa’s first instinct is to follow Cloud. But Zack Fair appears in front of her, shaking his head. When they both hear the slam of the bathroom door and several dry heaving sounds, Tifa concedes, feeling so very useless.

She and Ghost-Zack hover there, unsure of what to say.

“…I’m sorry,” Tifa says. “I know you’re trying your best.”

Ghost-Zack gapes at her, surprised.

She can’t help but smile at that. She forgot how silly he could look when he was alive.

“Cloud didn’t mean it. He’s just frustrated… we both are, really… If someone I cared about became one of those _things_ , I… I don’t _know_ what I’d…” She shakes her head. That’s unimportant. She has to think about Cloud. “This jewel… should I put it somewhere safe? Is there anything I need to do with it?”

Ghost-Zack studies her for a moment, before he breaks into a blinding smile and shakes his head. ‘Not yet,’ he mouths. ‘Just wait.’

“Let me guess,” Tifa says drily, “Cosmo Canyon?”

He shoots her some finger guns for the right answer.

She sighs but puts on her best smile. For now, Cloud and Ghost-Zack need her to be strong. “Alright, I’ll start flying the ship there. The sooner we get there, the sooner we figure things out, right?”

Ghost-Zack blinks at her in surprise again before he nods, throwing her a thumbs up.

Within the next moment, he vanishes, reappearing by the stirring wheel to point the right way.

:

Cloud hasn’t thrown up in an airship sink since his first few days as a rookie Shinra Trooper. Any assignments to underwater subs or airships were always torture for him. The movement of any vehicle just made his insides protest, he’d feel trapped, like he’d been swallowed by some strange metal beast. Eventually, Cloud got used to ignoring it. He’d focus on his friends or the view outside. He’d daydream about Tifa.

He throws up in the sink, wishing he could go back and time and erase all the ugly things he said. Zack’s _dead_ , gone. Zack can never joke around with Cloud again, never sling his arm over his shoulders, never steal his food, never try to convince Cloud to go out drinking, never train with him or tease him… If Zack were here instead of Cloud, he wouldn’t be complaining. Zack would do the right thing, without question, because he’s a true hero…

What happened to Tidus has nothing to do with Zack, Cloud knows that, but _stars,_ he wants to blame someone. Tidus was his best friend after Zack left. He was always smiling, joking around, late to _everything_ … He can’t be a part of Jenova now… he _can’t_ …

Shit. His vision’s going blurry again…

Cloud throws up once more.

He hisses at the sting of vomit sticking to his throat and lowers his head against the sink in annoyance.

“ _Ohh, Midgar…_ ” a sad voice sings through the ship, making Cloud’s heart skip a beat, “ _Midgar… city that’s always on my mind…_ _For Midgar, Midgar… I left my true love behind…_ ”

His knees wobble. He knows that voice.

Before he knows it, he’s following her… that song, that voice, opening the door and stumbling towards the pilot’s seat…

“ _Our parting words never said, only to be washed away…_ ” Her voice lilts up in a longing that makes Cloud want to tug her close and fight whoever put that longing there. “ _Swept up and lost in the stream of life_ …”

Tifa begins to hum instead of sing, the notes dipping into the depth of her sadness, soaking there until Cloud feels that sadness too…

“Marle’s right,” he says from behind her, “you sing it much better.”

Tifa nearly swerves the ship into a stray floating tree.

“Cloud!” she whirls around, an enticing shade of pink on her face, “How long have you been standing there?!”

He shrugs. “Long enough to hear the beginning of your song. You’re _really_ good.”

Tifa waves that compliment away, taking his hand. “How are you feeling? Do you need to sit down? Have you had any water, let me go get you some water—”

“No, wait, I’m fin—”

“No, you’re not!”

“But I _am_.”

“You were just throwing up in the bathroom—”

“ _I’m fine!_ ” he snaps.

Tifa drops his hand.

“I… _shit_ , I shouldn’t have snapped at you, I’m sorry. I’m just… Can’t we just forget this happened? I just want to forget…”

Tifa’s hurt expression softens and he doesn’t deserve it.

But she takes his hand anyway.

“Oh Cloud…” she murmurs, “it’s okay to be _not_ okay. You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

But he wants to be. For her.

“Let me take care of you,” but she always is, he can never do anything for her… for Tidus… for Zack… for _anybody…_ “You can be _not_ okay,” she insists, “even just for a while. You don’t need to hold all that pain inside.”

“…But Cosmo Canyon…”

“Autopilot,” Tifa grins. “We can take a break.”

“I…” he hesitates to lean on her, “I’m really tired…”

She answers his unspoken question, holding him against her and walking him to the kitchen seats.

“Will you…” he pauses, “will you keep singing that song?”

Her fingers tangle up in his hair as she coaxes him to lay his head on her lap. The feel of her thighs is solid yet comfortable, to be able to feel the motion of her breaths…

For a moment, she doesn’t say anything, and Cloud wonders if he overstepped. But then her voice continues where she left off on the song, her voice warm and comforting, tugging at his heartstrings and playing the love song that could be written for them.

“ _We both burned so very bright—brighter than the sun, yet we played it cool… never making a move…_ ”

Her voice carries him away to sweeter dreams, better worlds than this.

He dreams that he meets Tidus again, he dreams of Tidus smiling. He dreams that Tifa never leaves.


	13. The Avalanche

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know things are hard right now. Stay safe, stay healthy. I love you. Hugs to you all and so many thanks for your support.
> 
> The break really helped with my eye strain. I think I will continue to take weekends off for this fic to help with my poor eye health. But daily updates on weekdays! Oh and I know I said there will be answers... but they will happen next chapter :)

Her hands slowly card through his hair, brushing the spikes neatly in place when he wakes up. She’s humming again, a different song this time… light and soothing. She could sing anything and Cloud would be at peace.

When she notices him watching her, her face shifts into warm surprise. “Hey… sleep okay?”

It must be the sleep talking, or the beauty of waking up to the warm glow of the lifestream caressing her face, but he feels brave enough to say, “Yeah… Next to you, who wouldn’t?”

Tifa’s face turns completely red. It’s extremely satisfying, considering how tongue-tied she makes him by merely existing. He wonders what he can say to make her red again.

“I… have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says quickly, turning her head. Cute. “How are you feeling? I can get you some water… you should probably eat something too. I could make some soup with the new supplies we got.”

Cloud’s awfully tempted. He’s had Tifa’s cooking a few times, when she’d drop a lunchbox on his desk at school without warning. He knew she probably fed him out of pity when the other kids stole his lunch, rather than any romantic interest. Still, it was nice that she bothered to make a second lunch just for him… Made him jealous of whoever she originally made the lunchbox for…

“Nah, I’ll eat in a bit. Just gotta take a breather…” His head is still reeling from the Tidus reveal. He’s not as angry, just… numb. He doesn’t know if that’s any better.

Tifa looks like she understands, even if she’d rather feed him.

“Do you… want to talk about it?”

“I…” he resists the urge to roll on his side, to bury his face against her stomach, “I don’t know…”

There’s so much he could say… and yet he can’t think of any words. How is he supposed to talk about this? How can he? It’s like some macabre dream without any end… some nightmare that has no logic at all. Tidus shouldn’t be remembered as a grotesque creature, but the way he always was. Annoyingly cheerful, optimistic to a fault, and a dear friend.

Quietly, Tifa rests her hand back against his hair. “That’s okay. Talk when you’re ready.”

As her hand resumes stroking his hair, Cloud closes his eyes. When they’re like this, just… together, without any expectations, he feels… weightless. Nothing’s fixed, the pain is still there and binding…but he doesn’t feel alone.

He has her. And she has him. Even if she doesn’t love him, she has him.

“…Tidus was my best friend, after Zack left…” Cloud murmurs. “He was always doing goofy shit to make us laugh, always trying to get us to try this sport he made up called blitzball… always going on about his girlfriend Yuna… He wanted to marry her, you know? Now… he never will.”

“Oh Cloud…” her voice says, full of tears. “I’m sorry.”

It’s not the ‘sorry’ that people say to fill the silence. It’s a silence that grieves with him, that understands, because she’s lost her best friend too. She’s lost so much. It’s a ‘sorry’ that can’t imagine what it’s like to see a dear friend attack you like a monster. It’s a ‘sorry’ that holds him during the storm.

He swallows back his pain, the relief he feels that she’s here, and he murmurs, “Thank you…”

He tries not to tremble as she continues stroking his hair.

:

“We’re getting closer to Cosmo Canyon…” Tifa says after what seems like hours with his head on her lap, “We should be able to land on the rocks in about five minutes…”

That gets Cloud’s attention. He shoots up, careful not to accidentally hit Tifa’s chin, and stares out the window.

Just as Tifa said, the floating island in front of them is Cosmo Canyon. Up close, Cosmo Canyon is easily the biggest floating island they’ve encountered, the entire canyon intact along with the fields surrounding it. The safest thing that Cloud and Tifa can do is land on the outskirts, luckily guarded by the rocky landscape, and then trek to the village within the canyon, hoping for supplies or survivors. The journey should take several hours on foot, they’ll have to bring supplies… and the jewel that Zack made him grab.

But the oddest thing about the island of Cosmo Canyon is the hazy green glow in the air around it, surrounding the island in a strange dome. Mako, perhaps? Or the lifestream, acting strange again…

He looks around, trying to see if he can spot Ghost-Zack in the distance, guiding them. But Ghost-Zack is no where to be found.

“…Zack?” Cloud tries, standing up from Tifa’s lap.

No answer, no surprise appearances.

Exchanging a worried glance with Tifa, and trying not to panic that he chased away his old friend, Cloud walks over to the observation window and squints, hoping to spot Ghost-Zack somewhere…

His eyes scan the void, the distant branches of lifestream holding onto other islands… and then to the outskirts of Cosmo Canyon’s floating island…

There. Waiting at the entrance of Cosmo Canyon, Zack hovers, waving cheerfully at them.

Cloud lets out a relieved sigh.

“Ass…” he mutters.

Tifa only giggles. “I think he’s afraid you’re still mad at him.”

Cloud winces. “I’m not mad…”

Tifa gives him a look.

“Anymore… Well, okay, I’m still pretty mad. And frustrated. But he said we’d get answers here, so as long as we get answers, I won’t be mad.”

Tifa frowns thoughtfully, her gaze lingering on the strange green haze above Cosmo Canyon. “I hope it’s that simple…”

“…It better be…” Or Cloud will become the first person to punch a ghost in the face.

:

They manage to land the airship safely and begin packing for the journey. Food, sleeping bags, medkits, extra change of clothes, a tent, their weapons, and the jewel—with everything in order, Cloud also locks and barricades the entrance to the airship, just in case. The last thing he wants is for them to return and find one of those Jenova-things has snuck on board the ship.

They meet Ghost-Zack at the entrance of Cosmo Canyon, where Ghost-Zack hovers awfully close to Tifa, like a scolded puppy too afraid to confront its owner, peeking at Cloud occasionally with a hopeful smile. Cloud doesn’t know how to feel about this, but he can’t stay mad at Ghost-Zack. He never could.

He lifts his fist up and Ghost-Zack brightens, jumping up for a whoop, as he fist-bumps Cloud the best he can.

“Alright, alright, just lead on. We should get moving before it gets dark,” Cloud laughs.

Ghost-Zack bows dramatically and leads the way. When Cloud turns to Tifa, he sees her looking at him fondly… and a little sad.

“What’s wrong?” Did Cloud do something? Did _Zack_ do something? Does he need to learn to punch a ghost after all?

“Nothing, it’s just… it’s nice, seeing you smile like this. I’m glad you made good friends after you left Nibelheim. They’ve really helped you. You’re brighter with them around, I see it when you talk about them. You’ve grown.”

Cloud doesn’t know what to say to that. Tifa wouldn’t say this if she knew how many times Cloud tried to become a First-Class SOLDIER and failed, if she knew how he eventually began to turn away from the tests and stayed a grunt on purpose. She wouldn’t say this if she remembered how many times along this journey Cloud tried to save her and failed. Tifa always saved herself, and then Cloud, in turn.

He feels he hasn’t grown at all. If anything, his friends only helped him survive. He always felt as if he leeched off of them and their kindness.

But Tifa’s known him since they were kids. If anyone could say he changed and be right… it’s her.

Maybe… maybe he _has_ changed… for the better, he hopes.

“…Thanks Tifa… I… don’t know if I believe that, but it means a lot coming from you.”

Her brow furrows as she gets a determined look in her eyes. “I _mean_ it. My dad, everyone in Nibelheim, they couldn’t see you, the _real_ you. I’m just glad you met friends who saw the real you.”

“ _You_ saw the real me…” he mutters. He could never figure it out, why she kept talking to him and smiling at him, why she’d come meet with him after school when her father forbade it.

Tifa’s eyes go wide, her cheeks painted a lovely pink. “Cloud… I… I mean, I…” her hands fiddle with the other. “You _know_ I…”

He steps closer, this unspoken thing making him brave. “That you…?”

But then the shaking starts, erratic and crazy. Tifa and Cloud topple against each other, Cloud covering her with his body, looking for the danger—

A barrier of earth traps them inside, someone with Gravity Materia using it to corner them, likely a Mastered Gravity Materia for this level of precision. Ghost-Zack flickers in between the shaking, as if searching for the culprit, and when Cloud looks up, he sees a group of three people standing on top of the wall of earth—an intimidating man with a gun-arm, an older man with a spear, and a ninja girl from Wutai. Next to them, stands a strange furry red beast with a scar on its face…

Cloud reaches for his sword, but Tifa moves out of his arms.

“Tifa—” His fingers graze the back of her hair, grasping at the emptiness of air.

The gun-armed man slides down the earth wall, stomping towards Tifa…!

“No!” Cloud moves forward. But then the most unexpected thing happens.

The gun-armed man opens his arms wide, a startled laugh bursting out of him, and _tears_ running down his face as Tifa jumps into his embrace. What…?

“ _Tifa!_ ” the gun-armed man practically bawls around her.

“Barret!” Tifa cries back, holding him just as tightly.

Cloud drops his sword.

“You… know them?”

Ghost-Zack shares a bewildered look with Cloud and shrugs.

“Yeah, I…” Tifa wipes at her eyes. “Cloud, this is Barret. He’s… he’s like been like a father to me. He helped me set up Seventh Heaven, and he was out with… well with everyone and Aerith… and I thought… I thought _you were dead… how?!_ ”

“Missy, you have _no_ idea. We were in Cid’s airship when it all went down—I’ll have to introduce you to him and Yuffie. You’ve met Red, his real name’s Nanaki by the way—and somehow… we survived. We think… well, we think it’s thanks to Aerith.”

Tifa’s eyes go wide. Ghost-Zack’s light goes strangely dim.

“Aerith?” she says eagerly, “She’s alive too? Where is she?”

This time, Barret’s arms fall away. “I… I’m sorry, Teef… but… no. She… she didn’t make it…”

Tifa looks like she’ll collapse. “No… but then… _how_ …?”

Barret sighs, putting on a pair of sunglasses. “It’s a long story…” Cloud’s starting to hate that phrase. “We’ll walk you to the village and we’ll tell you what we know.”


	14. The Ancient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for all your support! Stay safe everyone <3 Next chapter might be delayed to Thursday because I have to write a report... we shall see

In this strange turn of events, Tifa and Barret begin exchanging information.

“This is Cloud,” Tifa’s hand rests on his shoulder, “the friend I told you about.”

Cloud’s heart nearly flips around, does a backflip and then throws itself into the ocean. Tifa _talked_ about him? What did she say? What does Barret _know?_

Barret studies Cloud intently and Cloud suddenly feels like he’s meeting Mr. Lockhart again, except somehow Barret’s worse and better than Mr. Lockhart in every way.

“The SOLDIER…?”

“Oh, he’s not a SOLDIER…”

“But he still worked for Shinra,” Barret says slowly.

“And _he_ is right here,” Cloud finds himself snapping. “Yeah, I worked for Shinra, doing grunt work. I left when the meteor was falling, that’s that.”

Barret studies Cloud for a bit longer then turns to Tifa. “And he’s been treating you alright?”

Cloud would be offended if this wasn’t the first time they’ve met.

“Barret,” Tifa says with fond exasperation, “Cloud is fine. Trust me. Every bit the guy I remember.”

“Hmmm…” Barret studies Cloud further. “Fine. I’ll trust your word, Teef. Nice to meet ya, Spikey. Who’s the ghost?”

Tifa lets out a sigh of relief, muttering something like ‘that went better than expected,’ before she introduces Ghost-Zack, who waves enthusiastically.

“Huh, can’t say I’ve met a lot of ghosts yet. Which is odd, considering how many of them hang around Cosmo Canyon… They kind of give me the creeps, even if they’re friendly… Uh, no offense Spots,” Barret nods at Ghost-Zack.

Ghost-Zack only shrugs as if to say ‘what can you do?’

“Well,” Barret waves his hand, his gravity materia bringing the walls of earth down, “let me introduce you to everyone. To the tall man holding a spear, Barret says, “This is Cid. He used to be a pilot for Shinra, but decided to join up with us. He’s probably the reason we’re all alive right now.”

Cid grins at them and nods. “Yo, heard good things about you, Miss Lockhart. Nice to meet a fellow Shinra deserter,” he says to Cloud.

“Uh… hi…” Cloud says awkwardly.

“That’s Yuffie. She’s a thief we picked up. Make sure you watch your pockets and materia, I kid you not, she will rob you blind…”

“Hey! That was just once! And I gave them back!” Yuffie says.

“You’ve met Nanaki, Tifa,” Barret says. “His gramps is the one letting us all stay in the village, and the one who can really explain what the hell’s going on.”

“Greetings Miss Tifa and Miss Tifa’s friend, I’m glad you’re alright,” Nanaki nods politely, his tail shaking happily. “Miss Aerith and Mr. Barret were always worried about you…”

Tifa tears up, kneeling down to hug him. “I was worried about you all too… I’m so glad you’re alright…”

“Stars, you freaked us out when we first saw you coming near,” Barret’s voice booms. “We thought you were stragglers, trying to attack the village, or more of those _things_ , especially when your Cloud’s walking around wearing a Shinra uniform. Sorry for attacking you two.”

“It’s okay, Barret, I understand,” Tifa laughs. “It can’t hurt to be too careful. But… what do you mean by stragglers? Are there more survivors?”

“A whole village of them and _more_ ,” Barret grins. “Why? You thought you two were the only ones who survived?”

With a flinch, Tifa turns her gaze towards her shoes.

“Kind of easy to think that when all of Midgar gets destroyed around you…” Cloud mutters.

To his credit, Barret actually looks guilty at that, even if he shoots Cloud a mildly annoyed look.

“Well, no time like the present. Let’s go!”

:

The trek towards the village in Cosmo Canyon is boisterous. Cloud finds himself almost flinching when Nanaki’s tail brushes past him or when Yuffie punches him in the shoulder. Cid’s voice is annoyingly loud as he boasts about having the best ship in the world and Barret won’t stop putting his hand on Tifa’s shoulder.

It’s just… strange being around so many people again. He was so used to just him and Tifa. Even before the meteor happened, he only did well in small groups of people he knew. Now, with all these strangers that have a shared history, he feels out of his depth. He wishes he could crawl away and fast forward to the village, to getting answers.

He also hates that he’s… jealous. All these people, they’ve known Tifa for so long (well Barret at least, and Cloud assumes Nanaki does as well). They know exactly what Tifa was doing after she left Nibelheim, maybe even _why_ she left Nibelheim. They can touch her so easily and share inside jokes.

It’s… a little lonely.

Ghost-Zack waves his hand in front of Cloud’s eyes and Cloud finds himself smiling. Ah, maybe that’s why Tifa was looking at them both both so sadly earlier. Maybe… maybe she felt that too.

“S’nothing,” he says. “Just… adjusting.”

Ghost-Zack nods and mimes something with his hands and feet. Cloud doesn’t bother trying to interpret that. He just _knows_ Ghost-Zack is suggesting a nonsensical way to get involved in Barret and Tifa’s conversation.

“No, I’m good… should give them some space to catch up… _No_ , I’m not being a coward. Oh, shut up. I know you can’t talk but _shut up_ ,” Cloud rolls his eyes when Ghost-Zack mimes playing a sad violin.

Barret, Cid, Yuffie, and Nanaki catch Tifa and Cloud up on what lead up to the end of the world. The story feels like a nonsensical and twisted fairy tale, or a messed up hero’s journey-turned-tragedy, about the actual terrorist group Avalanche. Cloud’s eyes nearly drop out of his head when he hears that Tifa was part of them.

Tifa looks away from him and murmurs, “I’ll explain later,” but Cloud can’t picture it. Why did Tifa join Avalanche? Weren’t they responsible for so many deaths?

But apparently not. Shinra was. Shinra was slowly killing the planet by using the lifestream.

When Cloud hears this, he almost throws up again. He never really looked into what Shinra was doing very closely. He just did as he was told without thinking. He didn’t even leave Shinra because it was the right thing to do. No, Cloud only left because he wanted to be with Tifa in his last moments.

If the world hadn’t been ending… would he have ever left?

As the story goes on, Cloud learns that Barret ran the new incarnation of Avalanche, trying to peacefully spread its message. When things got more desperate, when no one was listening, that’s when they tried to blow up a reactor… but they failed. Tifa and Aerith had become separated from the group… kidnapped by Shinra. Tifa was going to be executed as a symbol for Avalanche and Aerith was going to be experimented on for being one of the Ancients.

However, Tifa managed to help Aerith escape, getting severely injured. She had told Aerith to leave her behind and stop Sephiroth (apparently not dead and very not good) from killing the planet. With a heavy heart, Aerith left her.

Cloud’s hand grasps Tifa’s tightly.

“You were hurt?” he asks. “How badly?”

Tifa winces. “I… nearly lost my leg.”

God he wants to kill something. Preferably whoever almost made her lose her leg.

“Someone in Shinra helped me escape and get medical treatment actually… Reeve… I don’t know if he’s still alive…”

Cloud hopes he is.

From there the story twists. Tifa stayed behind in Midgar, lying low and hoping her friends were alive as her leg recovered. The others traveled the globe, chasing rumours of Sephiroth.

They found out that Sephiroth was born from Jenova, an experiment, and that he believed that Jenova was an ancient that needed to be one with the planet. In reality, Jenova is nothing but an alien lifeform come to devour all life.

Cloud shivers, remembering his encounter with the Jenova-thing from Midgar and the images it assaulted him and Tifa with… _The Calamity. The Destroyer._

Because of Reeve spying on them (Tifa gasps when she hears Reeve’s name and Cloud immediately detracts his good opinion of the man), an old black materia that they had been hunting ended up in Sephiroth’s hands… In the final battle against Sephiroth, to try and stop him from bringing down the meteor… Aerith died.

They couldn’t save the planet.

The meteor hit.

And it should have been over. Everything. Everyone.

The conversation goes silent.

“…And then?” Tifa asks quietly.

Barret and Cid exchange glances. Even cheerful Yuffie looks away while Nanaki fights back a cry.

“…Aerith saved us.”

“But _how_?”

Barret frowns. “It’s… better if we show you. Come on.”

Wary, Cloud and Tifa exchange glances, neither of them noticing how they subconsciously twine their fingers together.

Neither of them notice how dimly Zack shines now…

:

Eventually, as they make their way up the canyon trail, there are two diverging paths. The left path seems to lead to sounds of bustling, people talking and selling wares. The sound makes Cloud breathe easier. While he has no reason to distrust Barret, there’s nothing like _hearing_ the proof. So many survivors…

The right path goes up higher into the canyon cliffs…

“Come on, this way,” Barret waves them up. “You’ll want to see this first. Cid and Yuffie can take your bags over to the village… just hold onto your valuables. Remember what I told you about that ninja.”

“Hey, I told you I don’t do that anymore!” Yuffie sticks out her tongue. “Much.”

“… And that just means I’ll carry both bags, thanks. Stay away from me,” Cid glares at Yuffie before he takes both Cloud and Tifa’s things. Cloud makes sure to keep the jewel in his pockets. No way in hell is he parting with it after everything he went through to get it.

Barret leads them up higher and higher among the cliffs, until Cloud realizes that they’re heading towards whatever is making the void above them so bright in green…

The higher they walk, the stranger the air feels… like the way springtime rejuvenates the cold winter air. The tinge of _life_ in every breath.

Cloud crouches down to lend Tifa a hand climbing up when Barret stops. “Here we are,” he says.

Clutching Cloud’s hand tightly, Tifa gasps.

There, floating above the center of the canyon, is the body of a young woman in a pink dress, with long wavy brown hair. She hovers there, above it all, wrapped up in a bright ball of light, her hands clasped together in prayer or in death. From the light around her, every branch of the lifestream extends and reaches out to hold the pieces of Gaia together, the _planet_ together. She’s like a sleeping princess in some twisted fairy tale only there’s no prince to kiss her away, no magic to restore her to life.

Only an Ancient girl barely holding the world together, even in death.


	15. The Regret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for being patient with me and for all the support! To make up for the lack of update yesterday, have part 1 of 2 for today's double update!

“Aerith…” Tifa whispers, her hand stretched out as she nearly staggers off the edge of the cliff just to reach her.

“Tifa!” Cloud grabs her just in time, before her foot can slip off, pulling her against him.

She’s shaking her head in disbelief, so pale that Cloud can’t bear it. The last time he saw her like this, she’d been trying to dig her friends out of rubble. Beside him, Ghost-Zack looks almost transparent, almost blending into their surroundings, his eyes transfixed on the girl floating in that light. In between their breaths, the roar of the air, something seems to _hum_ from that light…

“What _happened_?” Cloud asks Barret.

Taking off his sunglasses, Barret wipes his eyes. “I… I dunno. I think… I think Aerith became one with the lifestream… I think she’s holding the world together…”

“No way…”

Cloud can’t imagine that, the stress and strain of trying to stop the world from dying. Can one Cetra really be that powerful? Or are the other souls of the lifestream also helping? From what Cloud recalls, of the souls of the lifestream hanging onto all the pieces of Gaia back in Midgar… he thinks that might be possible.

“How…” Tifa whispers, “how can we help her? Is there something she needs? She can’t hold onto the world forever… Cloud and I met one of those Jenova creatures… They’re _eating_ the lifestream. What happens if they reach Aerith?”

Barret’s jaw drops. “They’re _what?_ ”

Oh good. Something he _didn’t_ know. Shit.

“Haven’t you seen the lifestream turning red?” Cloud asks, pointing to the far-off distance, the Eastern continent now completely red like veins of blood. He wonders if the Jenova-thing will consume the oceans too… Tifa’s turtle friend…

“I dunno, I just thought that was normal?! No one’s been through this before, Spikey. We’ve been too busy repelling Jenova-Seeds and Shinra stragglers.”

Cloud’s grip tightens around Tifa. “Jenova-Seeds?”

“Yeah,” Barret nods. “They’re people who were hit by chunks of Jenova… it’s infected their brains and made them go all crazy. But far as I know, they haven’t been eating the lifestream.”

Cloud and Tifa exchange glances, that explains what happened to Tidus and why Costa Del Sol hasn’t disappeared yet. “Then… it must be only the Jenova-thing we met in Midgar… It could be an original piece of Jenova that’s gained sentience, maybe it’s the only one that can eat the lifestream.”

“Fuck.” Barret runs a hand through his hair. “Damn weird alien biology. Guess anything’s possible…”

“Do we know how to stop this?” Tifa presses again. “We’ve been following Zack here to get answers. This can’t be the end. There has to be more.”

[…There is.]

The voice, muddled as if it’s speaking under depths of cold ocean, echoes painfully against Cloud’s ears. He sees Tifa and Barret wince too, as they all stare at Ghost-Zack in alarm.

Ghost-Zack looks at them all sheepishly. [Hey. Sorry it took so long to say that.]

Cloud wants to point in Ghost-Zack in part betrayal and part accusation. “You could _talk_ the whole time?!”

[Not exactly.] Ghost-Zack’s not-voice murmurs in their minds, a voice louder than their own, just… sneaking into their thoughts. [When I’m away from the center… from _her_ , I can’t do much, I can’t even _speak_. None of the ghosts can. We’re stronger the closer we are to the center.]

“The center?”

[Center of the world, I guess? I don’t know how all this works. But it’s the center… the center of the lifestream, the center of the world… all of it is gathered here, where Aerith can be the strongest… because Cosmo Canyon has one of the Core Materia, a piece of the world’s core deep within the caves. The more of the world’s core we have, the stronger the Center will become… the stronger Aerith will be.]

“….So that’s why Cosmo Canyon is the largest piece of Gaia so far…” Tifa realizes as Cloud’s mind reels with all the new information they’ve learned. “It’s close to the Center and it has a Core Materia which made it easier for Aerith to protect… whereas Midgar was too far away… and it didn’t have a Core Materia.”

[Yup!] Zack shoots some finger guns at her. [You got it!]

“Where are we supposed to find the Core Materia?” Cloud asks. “Is this one of them?” He holds up the jewel from Costa Del Sol, the one he thought was part of the fountain. Now that he thinks about it, this Core Materia must have flown into the fountain at the moment of the world’s destruction.

[It is! That’s why I wanted you to grab it before Jenova could get to it. I don’t know how many pieces there are… I think, we have about two? Cosmo Canyon’s and Costa Del Sol’s. There’s another in Rocket Town and Nibelheim. Sephiroth got to the one in the Forbidden City. A lot of the Northern Continent is gone thanks to him…]

Cloud doesn’t miss how Tifa tenses at Sephiroth’s name.

“That bastard’s still alive?!” Barret spits out. “I thought he’d die with the meteor’s impact?”

[He’s Jenova’s spawn. Of course, he’s not dead. He’s thriving off this shit,] Zack waves the comment off. [Between him and that Jenova Creature on the Eastern Continent, it won’t be long before they both reach the Center… and then we’re _all_ doomed.]

“Then we’ll get the Core Materia.” Tifa stands up, out of Cloud’s arms. He tries not to reach out because of the loss. “I’ll go to Nibelheim.”

“I’ll take Rocket Town,” Barret decides.

Cloud stares at them both, unsure.

“Once we get the Core Materia… so what?” he voices the doubt that’s been eating at him this whole time. “Will Aerith be able to put the world back together? How can we even fight against Jenova? Against Sephiroth?”

The unspoken statement, that Sephiroth defeated Barret’s group, hangs through the air. Barret doesn’t even explode like Cloud expects him too, only clenches his fist and turns away. Even Tifa stays silent.

“So?” Cloud turns to Zack. “Do you have an answer? Did Aerith tell you?”

A flash of pain, that Cloud regrets, crosses over what he can see of Zack’s form. [No… she hasn’t told me anything. I only watch over her… like I always have. I know she was betting everything on her mother’s Materia, but nothing ever happened. This is just stuff I’ve picked up from listening to Bugenhagen talk. Theories.]

The confirmation that all of this is speculation, mere theory, makes Cloud deflate.

“…So?”

The quiet statement, firm and steady, jolts Cloud, Ghost-Zack, and Barret out of their stupor.

Tifa stares at them all with the same determination she has when she fought the Jenova-thing. “It’s a theory, but it’s _something_. Isn’t that better than nothing? We can talk in circles all we want about the _how_ , but look at what Aerith has already done. She’s _holding the world together!_ She’s already achieved the impossible. We just have to help her do more. I don’t know if gathering the Core Materia will solve anything, but we have to try. As long as we’re alive, we have to keep trying. Even if it’s hopeless. Otherwise, what else did she save us for? Why else did we survive?”

Cloud wants to bask in awe at the strength of Tifa’s words. Even now, when their task seems impossible, Tifa wants to keep fighting. He can see now, the woman who decided to join Avalanche, the woman who stayed behind to save her friends.

“Then alright then,” Barret claps a hand on Tifa’s back, his eyes shining. “You heard the lady. We’re going to try to do this. We’re going to help Aerith put the world back together.”

Tifa nods, turning towards Cloud and Ghost-Zack. “You’ll help too, won’t you?”

If Cloud hadn’t grown up with her, hadn’t journeyed with her since Midgar, he’d assume she was asking out of politeness. Tifa doesn’t need him, not really. She’s so strong on her own. But the way she fiddles with her hair behind her ear, the slight tremble of her lips, it makes him _hope_ so much, that she needs him.

“Yeah,” he says. “I will.”

He already promised himself that he wouldn’t leave her again. He would have figured out a way to convince her to let him tag along anyways.

[Of course, how else are you gonna get to the Core Materia in Nibelheim?] Ghost-Zack points at himself. [Lead it to me to show you the way! I’ll see if any of the ghosts here will help guide Mr. Marshmallow over here to the one in Rocket Town.]

“Oi, who are you calling a marshmallow!?”

Tifa nods. “Then let’s get going.”

[You three go back to the village and rest. We can leave tomorrow. I’m going to stick around for a bit,] Ghost-Zack shoos them away. [Gotta regain my energy.]

Come to think of it, Ghost-Zack has been looking very transparent until they arrived at the center. Now it looks like he’s regained his colour… he almost looks whole, like a live person, save for the green glow.

Cloud thinks of following Tifa, of getting some well-earned rest, but he decides to stay too. “I’ll catch up,” he tells her, inclining his head over to Ghost-Zack.

Tifa, ever understanding, squeezes his hand before leaving with Barret.

Then it’s just Cloud and Ghost-Zack, staring off of a cliff, at the girl holding the world together.

[You don’t have to stay. You should rest. I might not need to eat or sleep anymore, but I _know_ you should be tired by now,] his friend tries to smile.

“…Is she that girl you were waiting for? The one you kept writing letters to?” Cloud says instead.

Ghost-Zack’s smile freezes. Then he sighs, his expression softening and yearning as he stares over at Aerith. [Was it that obvious?]

“Kind of. Yeah.”

[Well, look at you, Nibelheim! You’re all intuitive now. I’m proud of you, buddy!] Ghost-Zack’s elbow goes through Cloud’s stomach.

He hides a smile. “Oh, shut up, Gongaga. It’s not intuition if your eyes scream how much you love her.”

[Pot meet kettle.]

Cloud rolls his eyes. “But seriously… are you alright? Have you… been able to speak with her at all? Since she…”

_Since she died?_

Ghost-Zack’s hand falls. He looks back at Aerith, like a flower unable to avoid the sun.

[No… Since she died, she’s been holding the world together… She hasn’t spoken to me or any of the ghosts I’ve met. Her mind is stretched out all over the planet, fighting for us.]

What can Cloud even say to that?

Ghost-Zack lets out a strained laugh. [You know… before I died, I tried so hard to get back to her. I escaped the worst prison experience ever, I walked miles across the Central Continent. I stole a boat, I hiked all the way to Midgar but… just when I was so close to Midgar’s walls… I… Well, I don’t even remember. But I definitely died. Next thing I knew, I was in the Lifestream, I was watching over her as much as I could, screaming at her not to be so stupidly reckless but she’s so stubborn. Even in her last moments, I couldn’t do anything for her.]

Cloud’s heart twists.

“…So that’s why you’ve been guarding her.”

[Yeah. When I heard from the other ghosts that you were alive, I thought you could help me help her. Sorry… for my selfish request. I know it’s been frustrating for you.]

“No,” Cloud shakes his head. “I think I understand.” He understands all too well the powerless feeling of being unable to do anything. “I would have done the same thing. Besides, we’re friends. I would have followed you anyways.”

Ghost-Zack’s eyes shine with the vitality of the lifestream, and all of its sorrow. [Thanks Cloud.]

“Here,” Cloud takes the jewel out for Ghost-Zack. “I think you should give this to her. Or at least, tell me how I can do that.”

[I think… I think I can do it. Being near her makes me stronger.]

With trembling hands, Ghost-Zack hesitantly tries to touch the jewel. It pulses, as if it has a heartbeat, the green light brightening in every breath. When Ghost-Zack’s fingers brush against the jewel, his fingers able to move it, Cloud lets out the breath he was holding.

Then Ghost-Zack takes the jewel, the Core Materia, and begins to hover towards Aerith.

Strange, how much it hurts to watch, how intimate this feels, as Zack tenderly approaches the light, tenderly puts his arms around Aerith’s floating body.

Quietly, Cloud turns his head away as Zack carefully presses the jewel against her chest.

This part, this moment, belongs to Zack and Aerith alone.

:

Cloud’s not sure if it’s the addition of the jewel or not… but… the green dome surrounding Cosmo Canyon seems larger now, stretched out further. Maybe… maybe this is the right thing to do.

Maybe they can fix things.

:

As Ghost-Zack leads Cloud down the cliff towards the village, Cloud finally feels comfortable enough to ask the question that has bothered him since Ghost-Zack’s appearance.

“Zack… just _why_ did you disappear?”

Ghost-Zack pauses. [What do you know about the Nibelheim incident? And Sephiroth’s supposed death?]

Cloud nearly slips. Nibelheim?

“There was an incident in Nibelheim? I thought Sephiroth died in the war!”

[…You should ask Tifa about this. She knows a lot of the story. Then you can ask me again.]

Thinking back to the fake residents in Nibelheim, the lies that they told him, Cloud nods. “Yeah, I’ll ask her as soon as we get to the village.”

But when they get to the village, the question of Nibelheim is the last thing on Cloud’s mind.


	16. The Living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's Part 2 of 2 for the double update today! Enjoy!!!!

Cloud wasn’t sure what he expected when he entered Cosmo Canyon’s village. The unfamiliarity of seeing homes and shops tucked into the cliff side didn’t even register. It's the despair and the numbness on people’s face as he and Ghost-Zack passed them buy. Those who sell wares and trade goods seem to be going through the motions. Most of the village is crowded in with refugees from all over Gaia, finding a piece of the ground to claim as their own with their own tents and blankets.

Even in Midgar, Cloud has never felt this crowded, this tucked in. The refugees gathered here are like sardines biding their time until the end. The dark circles under their eyes, the way so many people huddle in their tents and desperately watch the void above them, makes all the refugees look like dolls…

It’s as if the world ending earlier has shattered their hearts.

Cloud moves along quickly, following Ghost-Zack to one of the homes tucked into the cliffside, careful not to step on anyone’s toes or blankets. The other ghosts that Barret mentioned, Cloud sees floating up on top of the cliffs… just sadly watching those alive down below…

When Cloud steps into the home, he’s greeted with confining stone walls and firelit torches. Sitting by a table, in what he assumes is a tavern, are Tifa, Barret and the others. Tifa and Barret sit, likely telling Cid, Yuffie, and Nanaki about their plans. A little girl in a pink dress sits on Tifa’s lap, refusing to let go of Tifa’s waist.

“Oh, Cloud!” Tifa’s face brightens upon his approach. “Come here, sit down. You should have some of the stew, I ordered some for you. Barret and I were just catching everyone up on the plan.”

“Right…” He takes the offered seat, careful not to stare too much at the little girl hugging Tifa. The little girl, however, has no qualms about staring blatantly at him.

“You’re Cloud!” the girl says.

“Uh… Yeah…” Cloud tries not to sweat nervously. He hasn’t talked to a kid since… Nibelheim maybe? And even then, he had been a kid too.

“So you’re Tifa’s hero! The one she was waiting for!” the girl beams.

In that moment, Cloud nearly chokes on his spoonful of food, and Tifa turns bright red.

“Marlene!” she hisses. “How did you even know—”

“Well, he saved you when the meteor hit, right?” the girl named Marlene tilts her head in confusion. “And sometimes when you were sleeping before, you’d say his name… so…”

Cloud drops his spoon back into his bowl as Tifa’s stammers grow louder.

Logically, Cloud knows that Tifa remembered him. She recognized him when they reunited after all. But Cloud always thought he was nothing more than a footnote in her past, just that awkward boy who tried to make a promise with her, the boy she never wrote back to…

Tifa’s blush brightens so much that Cloud wants to poke his finger against her face. The impulse is so alien to him that he can’t help but want the blush to stay.

“Interesting…” he says slowly. “I hope we were doing something fun in the dream.”

The splutters from Tifa and Marlene’s giggles are worth Barret’s swearing fit. Ghost-Zack slaps Cloud on the back.

“Hey, this is no time to be lovey dovey, we’ve got a world to fix!” Barret scowls, turning to Cid’s smirk, Yuffie’s cackles, Ghost-Zack’s waggling eyebrows, and Nanaki’s shaking, he bellows, “Stop laughing, it’s not funny!”

“Nah, it’s _so_ funny—” Yuffie’s voice gets cut off by sudden screams from outside the tavern.

Immediately, the whole group grabs their weapons and rushes outside. They leave Marlene with one of Nanaki's relatives. The comforting green glow above Cosmo Canyon has grown immensely since Ghost-Zack gave Aerith the Core Materia from Costa Del Sol. The green haze has stretched out over more floating islands, but beyond the green haze of Aerith’s hold… another light has begun illuminating the void.

A red like dried blood.

Dread begins to build up in Cloud’s chest.

“What happened?” he asks one of the refugees, one of the few who aren’t pointing at the void and panicking.

“Dunno,” the person shrugs. “The red appeared like… a minute ago? Not the worse thing that could have happened to us…”

“The Northern Continent is gone!” someone, one of the people living higher up in the cliffs, shouts while waving around a small telescope. “So’s the Eastern one!”

Panic rises further, like being trapped in a room rapidly filling up with water, no room to breathe.

“What does that mean?!”

“Are we going to be next?!”

“The planet is punishing us! We’re not meant to live! We should have died in the void like the rest of the ghosts!”

“We’re paying for our sins, we should just throw ourselves into the void right now—”

“We’re evil. We’re the virus, the planet has to purge us out—”

As the panic infects the whole crowd, people began standing up, rushing back and forth either to rush to the edge of Cosmo Canyon’s floating island or to hide somewhere the red light of Jenova cannot find them. Cloud immediately shields Tifa as refugees begin elbowing each other, some of them trying to flee into the tavern, into any of the cliffside homes for a false sense of security, and then Barret lifts his gun arm into the air and shoots, “ _Everyone stop!_ ”

The rush of small missiles flying to the void and exploding into a yellowed light that’s familiar stops some of the movement, whilst only agitating others further. The crowd grows wilder with the added element of fear until Cloud sees Tifa grab one of Yuffie’s materia and equip it to her gloves.

From the void, a bright light descends, as Ifrit jumps down from a fiery hole, landing against the cliffside. Cloud’s jaw drops, he’s never seen a summon in real life before—they’re so rare, and the menacing heat from Ifrit’s form doesn’t make Cloud’s hand budge from his sword.

The sudden light and the rarity of the summon is enough to make people stop, and contrary to what Cloud expected, Ifrit doesn’t roar or go berserk. Instead Ifrit gently reaches down a hand for Tifa to jump up in (despite Cloud’s protests) and raises her up high in the air for people to see her.

“Everyone,” Tifa’s gentle voice sings out to the crowd, “I know you’re scared. I am too. But please, don’t panic. This is not the end. Don’t you _hear_ her? Fighting for us?”

The crowd begins to whisper to each other in confusion and in awe from seeing _the_ Ifrit in person.

“Just _listen_. Just be quiet for a moment, don’t speak or whisper… just… _listen_.”

Maybe it’s the fiery gaze of Ifrit, contrasting with him holding up a beautiful woman like Tifa for the crowd to see. Maybe it’s Tifa’s sincere and imploring voice, her desperate and caring gaze. All Cloud knows is that even if he didn’t know her, if he had seen her for the first time, in this moment, he’d do anything for her. In whatever lifetime, he’d do anything.

A spellbound hush falls over the crowd as they crane their heads up and just… stay still. Listen. At first, Cloud hears nothing. No wind, just hundreds of breaths and _nothing_.

But then… he hears it.

A light humming, the vague humming he heard before, a gentle song like a soothing lullaby… the kind Ma used to sing for him. It’s a song that’s sung to soothe a soul’s tired day, to celebrate life and tenderness, it’s a song that that’s sung to protect one’s dreams, to guide one to sleep. It’s… beautiful, so nostalgic, and yet Cloud knows he’s never heard this before (except, maybe vaguely when he first saw Aerith floating in the Center.)

Slowly, the humming gets louder. Cloud opens his eyes and he thinks… the ghosts are joining in, all of them floating along the edge, holding hands and _humming_ that same song. Tifa’s voice joins in too, no words or obvious singing… just her gentle hums.

One by one, the crowd opens their eyes, all of them shimmering with various degrees of tears…

“Do you hear it?” Tifa asks. “Do you hear Aerith keeping us together? Even now… she’s fighting against the thing that tried to kill the planet. I don’t think the planet hates us. I think the planet loves us so much, even though we’ve hurt it. We’re selfish. We can be self-absorbed. So many of us did nothing while the greedy used the lifestream for money and their own gains. Maybe some of us are evil. Maybe some of us are sinners. But I think we have the potential to do so much good. What was your first instinct when the world was going to end? Was it to hurt others, was it to lash out? Maybe it was… but in your last moments… I bet you tried to find someone you loved. I bet you tried to be with them as much as possible… and in that moment, you were the most human. Maybe we do have a lot to atone for, but should the sins of the few pay for the many? We’ve _survived_. That has to mean something. We have to make that mean something. My friends and I are going to try and stop Jenova or die trying. We’re not going to give up. So are you going to sit there and panic or are you going to fight to _live_?”

The silence that meets Tifa answers volumes.

“Okay,” she says quietly. “Thank you for your time.”

As Ifrit silently lowers Tifa back to the ground, Cloud rushes over to her and checks her over for injuries. Tifa leans against him gratefully. “Remind me to never do that again…” she murmurs.

Cloud smiles softly at her. “You’re so reckless, no amount of nagging would stop you.”

“Guess you’ll have to chase after me.”

“Guess I will,” he says softly.

A single clap breaks them out of their thoughts, and then another, and another. Until the whole crowd begins joining in with the clapping and _cheering_ , whoops about rebuilding the world, about helping Aerith, about living another day. The village, so despondent before, seems to team with _life_ and people humming Aerith’s song.

Barret steps in on the other side of Tifa and smiles. “Hell of a speech, Teef.”


	17. The Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the support! Like last week, I will take the weekend off and update again on Monday!

Cloud can’t sleep. He’s sharing a room with Barret and Cid because of the lack of space and Bugenhagen’s generosity. Barret’s snores could make stone come to life with how loud he is and Cid’s sleep-talking doesn’t help. If Cloud hears another mumble about space-pirates again, he’ll throw his pillow at him. Only Nanaki sleeps quietly, all cuddled up in blankets, and Cloud envies him.

He tosses and turns again, unused to the soft mattress. Seems like he’s too used to sleeping on hard bunks with cramped spaces.

With a sigh, Cloud swings his feet out from the bed and decides to take a walk. Maybe blowing off excess energy will make him tired enough to sleep. Tomorrow will be a big day…

Feeling chilly, Cloud grabs his blanket and drapes it around his shoulders, not caring how pathetic it makes him look. If anyone makes fun of him for trying to stay warm, he’ll just glare at them.

As Cloud exits the room, to the stone path outside, he sees Ghost-Zack hovering on top of the cliff… likely guarding Aerith. He waves and Cloud waves back. Then Cloud turns to the stone path.

It boggles his mind, how these stone paths don’t have any fences to stop someone from falling down to the plateau below. Cloud can’t help recalling the memory of Tifa falling down Mount Nibel and his pathetic attempts to save her…

He shivers.

Then, his feet stop, as he spies the very woman of his thoughts sitting against the cliff’s stony wall, arms curled around her legs. The night gown she borrowed from Yuffie, practically a sack on Yuffie’s frame, hugs her figure close and only just hits above her knees. The material is made with light blue silk, the same colour of the dress she wore when she met him on the water tower. She even stares up at the stars (well, the void) in the same way, head craned to the side, her gaze searching…

Cloud’s mouth goes dry.

His feet move towards her before he can think, and he sits by her, careful to leave an inch of space between them.

“Hey…” he says dumbly, brain still struggling to think beyond ‘blue dress’ and ‘cute’ and ‘Tifa’ and ‘kiss her.’ “Can’t sleep?”

Stupid question. Of course, she can’t sleep.

But Tifa, patient as always, only shakes her head. “No. You too?”

Cloud shrugs, resting his arm on his knee and letting the other leg lay flat. He settles his head against the crook of his arm and, just like seven years ago, he doesn’t dare look at her.

“Bad dreams?” she asks.

“No, actually,” Cloud laughs. “Barret and Cid snore.”

Tifa giggles. “Oh, you poor soul!”

“Yes, yes, laugh at my suffering…” he smiles, and blinks in surprise at how close their faces are. Her eyes are so warm, the colour of the most intense sunsets, the colour of warm wine. He’s never really taken the time to study them before. He loves the bits of brown in them, the intense kindness that she bears…

“Cloud,” her voice breaks his thoughts and he clears his throat, looking away.

“Yeah?”

“…What do you know about Nibelheim?”

He frowns. “Well… it’s where we both grew up…”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, did you ever hear what happened? Five years ago? With Sephiroth?”

“Wasn’t he in Wutai at the time…?”

“No!” She grabs his hand, “I mean… Cloud, before we go there tomorrow, you _have_ to know… Nibelheim burned down. Five years ago. Everyone died. Papa, your mom… I couldn’t stop any of it, and I thought… I thought you stopped writing to me because you were _mad_ that I survived and no one else did, but earlier, it seemed like you didn’t _know_ , and you should. You really should, your mom loved you so much—”

“Whoa, Tifa, _what_ ,” he squeezes her hands in turn, uncertain of what to do with her trembling. “I don’t… I don’t understand. Nibelheim was _fine_ when I last went there—”

“But it’s not—”

“No, I mean, I flew my ship straight to Nibelheim as soon as I heard the meteor was coming, and Nibelheim was still standing there. My house, yours… Everything was _there_ … just… There were a bunch of _liars_ living there, pretending to be the townsfolk, pretending they were always living in our homes…”

Tifa freezes, her gaze blank. “That can’t… that can’t be right… I was _there_ when it burned, you have to believe me—”

She trembles so much that Cloud can’t stand it. He throws his arms around her, he holds her close, he counts their heartbeats until hers matches his.

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmurs again and again, “I believe you… they were liars, I don’t know why they were lying… but we’ll figure it out… I believe you…”

Time seems weightless and meaningless as they hug in the expanse of the void, only distant stars and ghosts to watch them. But eventually, Cloud has to let go, his arms feeling numb, and eventually Tifa’s shaking stops.

Tifa stares down at the light floral patterns on her night gown. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that again… I must have… I don’t _know_ what’s happening, or if we’ll get any answers about Nibelheim, or if we can help Aerith but—”

“Hey,” he says softly, “don’t apologize. We’ll figure it out.”

She stares up at him, her reddish-brown eyes wide and imploring. “You… you promise?”

His breath hitches and for a moment, he can’t think, his memory of her overlapping with the woman before him and suddenly, he feels brave enough to do what his fourteen-year-old self could not. He scoots closer to her, carefully cradling their hands together, and brings their interlocked hands up to his heart.

“I promise,” he says slowly, his breath caressing their knuckles. “What we do in the future, we’ll do together.”

Her lip trembles, and she buries her face against his shoulder.

“… _Thank you_ , Cloud. Just… Thank you.”

He doesn’t quite know what for, but whatever Tifa needs, he’d do it again in a heartbeat. Carefully, Cloud cradles her against him, and drapes his blanket over her shoulder too.

They cuddle close together, staring up at the void, as Tifa tells him everything. The day Sephiroth came to visit Nibelheim to inspect the Mako reactor, meeting Zack, how Sephiroth went crazy after learning something about Jenova, how Sephiroth burned down the village and stabbed Tifa’s father… how Tifa nearly died trying to kill him too.

“Zack managed to get back up again… he and Sephiroth were fighting, trying to grab a sword to kill the other when they… when they both fell into the mako vat below… I thought that killed Sephiroth. Apparently not. But that whole thing made me hate Shinra so much… I joined Avalanche as soon as I came to Midgar. If it weren’t for Marlene and Aerith… I might have gone along with any of Avalanche’s crazy schemes… but Aerith kept me sane. Marlene kept me from being… well…”

“You?” Cloud muses.

“Reckless,” Tifa laughs.

“No really? You? Reckless? I never would have guessed,” he huffs against her hair.

“Yes, yes, I know…”

A subdued silence falls between them.

“How…” Tifa says tentatively, “how are you feeling?”

Slowly, Cloud wraps the blanket around both of them tighter. “I… I don’t know. I thought Ma was alive this whole time… and I thought she just died in the meteor blast like everyone else but Shinra just fed me more lies… Sephiroth… he was my hero, you know? I’ve never met him and now he’s the guy who killed my mom and nearly killed my g—friend,” he says hastily, “I… I don’t know _how_ to feel. It’s nothing compared to what you’re going through. You _saw_ the whole thing. I… I just showed up five years too late…”

“Hey!” Tifa shifts in his arms, so that they can see eye to eye. “You came _just_ in time. If you were there five years ago… you would have died too! I barely survived. Just sheer dumb luck. I’m glad I met you again now. I’m glad you’re here. You aren’t late Cloud, you’re just in time.”

Every numb feeling in him, all the doubt and insecurity, it flees at the sight of Tifa’s determination. Cloud wants to laugh again.

“How do you keep doing that?” he asks.

She blinks at him in confusion. “Doing what?”

“Believing in people. Believing in… me.”

Tifa’s mouth falls open. Then she shakes her head and puts a finger against her lips.

“That’s a secret,” she sings, the lilt of her voice making his heart beat faster. “If you ever figure it out, I’ll say it out loud.”

“What? That makes no sense. Once I figure it out, why would you need to say it out loud?”

Tifa laughs, turning so that she can settle herself against his chest again. “Some things need saying, Cloud, even if you know it in your heart.”

Cloud’s brow furrows as he tries to piece together the meaning of her words. “Give me a hint?”

“Hm…. Nope!”

“Oh come on, you _definitely_ trained with Master Zangan too much!” That old man always loved random sayings. “Just one hint? A word? A _letter?_ ”

“Nope!”

As they tease each other for the rest of the night, Cloud silently swears that if they run across Sephiroth in Nibelheim… that he’ll kill him.


	18. The Liars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for my absence! If you've been following my twitter or art tumblr, you know that I had a really bad week with personal life issues and bad health. But I'm back and feeling a lot better! Daily updates will resume now, and I'm going to post my next Cloti fic AFTER Meteor Seeds is done just so I can relieve the pressure on myself. Thank you as always for your patience and your support. And thank you for every comment, kudos, and all the time you spend reading. I'm so grateful and humbled by your responses. You are the best ^0^ much love!

Waking up next to Tifa has to be the best way to start the day, especially after the end of the world, even if his neck feels sore from sleeping against a wall. The transition from the dark and blank dream world to reality feels like slowly wading into a watercolour painting, seeing the green glow of the lifestream paint sea green against Tifa’s dark hair, accompanied by the hint of vanilla that always seems to cling to her. He closes his eyes and breathes her in, treasuring this moment.

…Until he opens his eyes and sees a strange cat thing, on top of a huge moogle mascot, staring down at them with _way too much interest!_

“What the hell?!” Cloud brings Tifa closer to him, covering her sleepy body with his. “What are you staring at?!”

The freaky smile on the cat-thing’s face seems to grow wider as it claps its obnoxiously wide paws together. “Just admiring the lovely couple! I am so dearly pleased that dear Miss Tifa survived the meteor! You’re new though!”

Even the cat-thing’s voice is annoying, its tone bordering on clown-like and sinister.

He glares.

“Oh, right! Where are my manners? I’m Cait Sith! I don’t know if Mr. Barret told you about me—”

Cloud narrows his eyes. “The puppet that gave the black materia to Shinra and pretty much ended the world.”

“Hey!” Cait Sith, or should Cloud refer to it as Reeve, whines. “That was not my—what is it, boss? Urgh, fine. Reeve wants to talk to you.”

Huh. So the cat-thing has its own… consciousness? Urgh, Cloud’s not a scientist, how the hell is he supposed to know?

The shift in Cait Sith’s personality is subtle. Sure, it still looks creepy-cute. But the way it moves is more elegant now, poised and serious.

“…I’d like to apologize for my part in the events that sparked the end of the world,” what Cloud assumes is Reeve recites. “I never intended for so many lives to be lost. I thought I was helping…but I was blind. Cait Sith and myself are attempting to make amends. If you and Miss Tifa would be amendable, we’d like to join you on your journey to Nibelheim.”

Cloud scowls. “How about no? I appreciate what you did for Tifa back in Midgar, for treating her leg and keeping her hidden from Shinra, but you still betrayed them in the end. I can’t trust you.”

“Please,” Reeve-Cait-Sith presses his paws together. “There’s no more Shinra, no one I can possibly betray you to—besides Sephiroth I suppose, but I am _absolutely_ not working for an abomination like him—I just need to come with you! You’ll need help fighting anyone who’s been infected by the Jenova seeds, and a robotic cat is great bait for that!”

“Hey!” Cait-Sith, probably the real one, retorts. “I can’t be replaced anymore! No more factories to make more me!”

“Right, sorry,” Reeve-Cait-Sith seems to say. “But restoring the world takes priorities.”

The real Cait Sith only grumbles in reply.

Cloud frowns. While it’s true that he and Tifa could use help fighting the Jenova Seeds, he still doesn’t want any unknown elements added to their party.

“Then tell me something, there was an incident in Nibelheim… involving Sephiroth. Why didn’t you tell the soldiers from there what really happened? Why did you let them think that their families forgot about them?”

Reeve-Cait-Sith falters at those words. “Oh. So you were the soldier we recruited from Nibelheim… I… I’m sorry.”

“Well?” Cloud demands.

“You were the only one from Nibelheim. And you seemed estranged from your mother and the residents there already. You rarely sent letters before the incident began. We thought… well, we thought that you didn’t care. You never took any leave to visit your family. If you _were_ to take leave, we would have told you. But… you didn’t.”

“And that made it okay for Shinra to _lie_ to me about my family?! Of course, I care!” Cloud shouts, “Anyone would care if their hometown was _burned to the ground_ by their childhood hero, that their _mom_ was gone! You should have told me! I bet you wouldn’t have even cared if I went back to Nibelheim. Shinra rebuilt it, replaced everyone with… what, actors?! Why the hell would you _do_ that?! Do you really think I’d be okay with come back home to a bunch of liars?! You really want me to believe that Shinra would have told me the truth if I had just _asked?_ ”

The Reeve-Cait-Sith thing’s paws tremble… as if it has feelings. Cloud’s not fooled.

“So?! Am I right?”

“I…” Reeve-Cait-Sith’s ears droop down. “No. I suppose you’re probably right… While I would have told you the truth, I certainly wasn’t in charge of the choices that mattered for Shinra. The others… Rufus, Heidigger, Scarlet… they would have probably had you killed or court-martialed once you asked questions… I… I’m sorry.”

“Then I don’t have any reason to trust you.”

The stabbing silence between them speaks volumes. If Reeve couldn’t stop his co-workers from damning the world, from ruining so many lives, what use will Reeve or Cait Sith be now?

“…Are you really trying to atone?”

Both Cait Sith and Cloud turn their heads to Tifa in surprise, apparently awake the whole time.

Relieved, Cait Sith nods his head up and down.

Tifa frowns. “You’re… really Reeve too?”

“And Cait Sith! Reeve uses me to spy and talk!”

“Then… where’s the real Reeve?”

“Trapped,” Cait Sith says, “in Rocket Town. He was tired of doing nothing and tried to go to the Northern Crater to join the fight against Sephiroth, but it was too late. Now he’s boarded up in a house surrounded by Jenova Seeds. Can’t fight. Can’t move. Trapped.”

“What?! Are there any other survivors?” Tifa nearly falls out of Cloud’s arms. Cloud quickly gathers her back into his arms, his head racing with the new information. So Reeve tried to change at the last minute…

“…A few. But they’re running out of time.”

“No wonder you want the world restored…” Cloud murmurs. He and Tifa only escaped the Jenova-thing in Midgar and the Jenova-seeds in Costa Del Sol because they had his stolen airship. Could they have survived this long, trapped in a crumbling building, surrounded by those things?

“Of course! So what do you say?”

Tifa glances at Cloud, her gaze imploring.

Cloud shakes his head and shrugs. In the end, Tifa knows Reeve’s character better than he does. He still doesn’t trust Reeve, but he saved Tifa before. That… that has to count for something. If Tifa chooses to let Reeve-Cait-Sith travel with them, then Cloud will watch the cat-thing’s movements like a hawk. The moment it steps out of line… he’ll throw it overboard.

“It’s your call.”

Tifa bites her lip.

“Reeve… I still don’t know if I can forgive you for your part in all this… but you helped me before, when you didn’t have to. Without you, I wouldn’t be walking right now. So yeah. You and Cait Sith can come.”

“ _Yes!_ ”

Suddenly Cloud has a handful of robot-cat-thing pouncing on top of them to hug them to death.

“ _Thank you, thank you, thank you, you won’t regret this!_ ”

That is definitely all Cait Sith, unless Reeve is a troll.

“Alright, just get off!”

:

Cait Sith squeaks and hides behind Tifa’s shoulder when Barret shows up with the others. Ghost-Zack only narrows his eyes at Cait Sith before pasting on an aggressive smile. Thank goodness, Cloud’s not the only one wary of the cat-thing. “Don’t let him kill me!”

“I’m debating it,” Cloud says, if only because watching the cat-thing shake in fear is kind of funny.

“Cloud!” Tifa frowns in disappointment, her soft eyes stabbing at his soul as she reaches up to pet Cait-Sith on the head (and how the hell does that even work?! It’s a robot! It doesn’t _feel_ the need to be pet!) “I know he hasn’t made the best of decisions but _try_ to be nice.”

He can see that little demon-cat-thing sniggering at him.

“But Tifa—”

“He saved my life, remember?”

Cloud has no argument for that so he just huffs. He’ll get back at the stupid cat-thing later. It’s _Reeve_ that saved Tifa, doesn’t mean Cloud has to play nice with the weird robot cat-thing.

“Spikey’s got a point,” Barret observes, already figuring out the situation. “You sure you want him following you around?”

“Barret…” Tifa says softly, “he wants to atone.”

A silent conversation passes between them both before Barret sighs. “Alright then. I trust your judgement, Teef. You two,” Barret points at Cloud and Ghost-Zack, “better watch out for her!”

For some reason, Barret always makes Cloud stand up straighter with the urge to prove himself. This time is no different. “We will,” Cloud promises.

[Already done. Gotta look out for my little lady’s best girl,] Ghost-Zack nods.

“And you,” Barret glowers at Cait Sith, “I got a lot of shit I want to say to you… but that can wait. We got a world to rebuild. But you better be atoning. Don’t waste their time. We don’t have a lot of it left.”

Cait Sith’s fur stands on its edge, like a real cat’s would. “Don’t patronize me. Surely you know how hard it is to atone.”

“Don’t talk to me about atonement! I did what I had to because I wanted to protect the planet, to make a better place for my girls to _thrive_. I had to hurt some folks to do it, and do I regret the way I went about it? Hell yeah. But I’m not whining about how hard it is to atone, I’m doing something about it like I always have. I won’t let anything excuse my actions. Can you say the same?”

Cait Sith or Reeve or both… have no answer.

Barret breaks away his glare. “Yeah. I thought so. Let’s head out.”

:

At the village’s entrance, they go on their separate ways. Barret’s group parked their airship on the other end of the canyon, and Cloud and Tifa will return to their own airship with Ghost-Zack and Cait Sith.

“Here,” Cid passes them a radio, “I have them hooked to my channel. We’ll be able to communicate between our ships as long as we’re on the right frequency. We’ll give each other an update of any danger or if we get the Core Materia first.”

“Got it,” Cloud nods, pocketing the radio.

“Where’s the ghost that’s supposed to lead us to Rocket Town?” Yuffie asks. “If we have to look under ever rock in that town, I swear…”

[Don’t worry, she’ll meet you at the airship,] Ghost-Zack tells them. [She’s probably early. If she isn’t there, just radio us and we’ll figure something out.]

Barret, Tifa, and Nanaki exchange hugs. Tifa stands close to them both, wiping at her eyes before she murmurs, “If Sephiroth or the Jenova-thing show up… just… just run. Even if you don’t get the Core Materia. Your lives are so precious now… _especially_ now that there’s so few lives left. Don’t sacrifice yourselves. Live another day.”

“…You know we can’t promise that, Teef,” Barret doesn’t bother trying to wipe at the tears beginning to form in his eyes.

“If we can secure the Core Materia, for the future of everyone, we’ll do it,” Nanaki tells her. “But we’ll do our best to stay safe.”

“Sides, you think I’ll make that promise when I know you won’t be. I know you, girl. You’re gonna be jumping straight first into danger and there won’t be anything I can do against it. Just… do your best. And if this is the last time any of us see each other… _god_ , I’m so glad I got to see you again. I’m real glad.”

“Me too,” Tifa whispers, and Cloud has to look away. This moment between them is something Cloud can’t intrude on. For a moment, he sees Mrs. Lockhart in Barret’s place, tenderly holding a younger Tifa in place. But the moment vanishes and Cloud turns his attention elsewhere.

Ghost-Zack nudges Cloud in the shoulder. [You okay?]

“…Yeah,” Cloud murmurs. “Hey, Zack? Can you show me a few moves with the sword on the airship? Something to help me fight better?”

Ghost-Zack’s brow shoots up. “Yeah, of course. Gonna be limited, since I’m, well, dead… but anything’s better than nothing.”

“Good.”

Cloud needs to focus if he’s going to go up against Sephiroth, if he’s going to keep an eye on Cait Sith.

This isn’t the time to be thinking about his feelings.

**Interlude: Barret**

_Surely, you know how hard it is to atone._

If Tifa hadn’t been there, Barret would have punched that damned cat in its smug little face for that alone. If anyone knows anything about atonement, it’s Barret. His whole life seems to have been in service to atonement.

Maybe he thought it was revenge, a long time ago, but Marlene showed him different. Tifa and Aerith showed him different. All of these people, coming into his life after he lost his soulmate, and they had the audacity to make a place there…

So yeah, Barret knows a hell of a lot more about atonement then some safe little Shinra employee does. He’s had to work for it, suffer for it, travel across the world, and lose one of his friends for it. He’ll never forget the look on Tifa’s face when Hojo’s experiment damned near tore her leg apart and she told him and Aerith to leave her behind. He’ll never forgive himself for not being faster, as Tifa pushed them both into an aircraft carrier and closed the door shut.

He’ll never forgive himself for being unable to beat Sephiroth, for little Aerith of all people coming to their rescue, a sacrifice in their places.

He’s wondered if he deserves to live so many times.

But if he drops dead now, he’ll never be able to fix things. Marlene’s still alive. _Tifa’s_ alive.

When he sees Myrna again, he wants there to be an afterlife, damn it. He wants her to be able to see what he’s done to atone and forgive him.

Until then, he’ll keep on living, no matter what the universe throws at him.

He keeps an eye on Yuffie (annoying brat always tends to wander off, attracting another battle with monsters or Jenova-seeds) while Cid leads the way. Barret makes sure to make conversation with Nanaki, the way Aerith used to, so Nanaki doesn’t fall into a sulk.

They’re almost at the airship when… when he sees her. But it can’t be her. He’s not ready, he hasn’t atoned enough, he got her _killed_ but—

[Oh, sweetheart,] her hands fly up to stroke his chin, but all he feels is the cold instead of her once warm and comforting hands, [Please don’t cry. I’ve been waiting for so long to see you.]

He shakes his head. She can’t be real. She can’t.

[Hey, Care Bear,] the ghost of Myrna teases him, despite the silver tears coming down her face, [don’t be like that or I’ll start crying too.]

The ghost of Myrna is _here_ , smiling like she used to, now his guide to Rocket Town, and Barret can barely remember how to speak.

[It’s okay,] she murmurs, [It’s _okay_ , you’ve worked so hard… You have nothing to apologize for…]

Barret Wallace knows how hard it is to atone. But he never thought forgiveness could be this beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> got character interludes now to show what's happening with the other party members, and now that we know other people are alive ^0^


	19. The Mako

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all the support!!! Much love!!! Once again, I am back on my trash habits of typing until my hands ache ahahaa, and until my eyes scream.

“So that’s where that missing airship went,” Cait Sith notes when their group finally arrives at the airship.

“Not like you were using it,” Cloud mumbles, refusing to feel guilty for it.

“Fair. You weren’t the only one who turned to theft at the end of the world. A number of them were reported missing before soldiers just gave up reporting things that had no point to it.”

The cool assessment, from this cartoonish cat of all things, makes Cloud frown.

“Why are you a cat, by the way? Seems a bit too… childish.”

When he tries to picture what Reeve might look like, he figures an older man with graying hair. Maybe even holding a cane to stop his back from hunching in. But dressed properly in a suit, with a dignified gaze. At least, that’s what Cait Sith sounds like when Reeve takes over.

“Maybe I just like cats.”

Cloud stares at Cait Sith who winks from Tifa’s shoulder.

“No way, is that seriously it?”

“Cats are cute,” Tifa offers.

[And they make good lap warmers. What?] Ghost-Zack shrugs when Cloud glares at him. [We had a lot of cats on the farm back home!]

“And no one really suspects a cute mascot of spying on them,” Cait Sith admits.

Ah, there it is.

At least this time Tifa gives the Look of Disappointment to Cait Sith instead of Cloud.

“Right… well,” Tifa crosses her arms. “I’ll take Cait Sith and ask him and Reeve more… questions about Sephiroth and Shinra while I fly the ship. You go ahead and train with Zack, Cloud. I’ll catch you two up on what I learn.”

[Sounds good, boss!] Zack salutes.

Cloud nods stiffly, not wanting to leave Tifa ‘alone’ with Cait Sith. But he knows Tifa can take care of herself. Reluctantly, he lets her go.

:

Flying this ship never fails to make Tifa incredibly nervous. There’s something about being in the air, in having to place her trust in a machine made from metal not to let her fall, that seems so absurd. As long as she doesn’t think about it too much, as long as she focuses on steering the ship straight ahead, she can calm her heart beat.

It’s just… easier when Cloud is there next to her.

Everything’s easier when Cloud is next to her.

But now’s not the time to think about how Cloud makes her feel.

(He can’t stay with her forever.)

“…How are you feeling, Miss Tifa?” Cait Sith asks from his little seat on the control panel.

Her smile is automatic. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“…Are you truly?”

The way he says it… well, Tifa knows it’s Reeve talking through Cait Sith again.

They spent a lot of time together, when Tifa wasn’t sure if she was going to keep her leg or not, when Tifa lay there in that bed, hidden from the rest of Shinra, wondering if her friends survived.

(Aerith didn’t. Tifa should have _been_ there. She should have done so much more—)

“I don’t know,” she says honestly, because if there’s anyone she can say that too… it’s the man who saw her trying to crawl away from Hojo’s experiment with her leg just barely attached to her… He saw her screaming in his hidden medical bay, trying to punch doctors that tried to touch her. He saw her silently crying, refusing to make a sound as they stitched her back up. He saw her pulling herself back up on metal bars, willing herself to _stand_.

Tifa’s not as strong as she used to be, before Hojo and Shinra. One hit at her weak point, at her leg that sometimes forgets to walk, and she’s down…

She’s been lucky so far.

Way too lucky.

Reeve-Cait-Sith’s ears flop down, sensing her inner turmoil. While they never spoke much, they’ve become accustomed to each other’s silences.

“Just a little longer, Miss Tifa. We’ll fix things. You’ve already fixed so much. Look!”

Her eyes follow where Cait Sith’s little paw points, up to the void. Already, the strong green haze that centers around Aerith and Cosmo Canyon has stretched out further, engulfing where Costa Del Sol is, and the bits of the bubbled ocean… Those floating islands under the green haze seem closer together, just cracks apart. They’re like puzzle pieces, yet to be clicked together… just waiting, for the right pieces. The green haze has become a horizon like jade, filled with dotted stars and branches of lifestream… and it’s beautiful.

She did that. Aerith’s holding more of the world together, with just one more bit of Core Materia.

Tifa almost lets her hands slip off the steering wheel in awe.

Even now, her dear friend is still fighting.

Tifa has to do her part too.

Every pulse, every hum, of the lifestream seems to sing out at her… _don’t give up, I’m here, I’m here, don’t give up…_

“Message loud and clear…” Tifa replies softly.

Cait Sith looks at her in curiosity.

Tifa shakes her head. “Just… talking to an old friend. Thank you, Reeve… Cait Sith, for coming with us. You really didn’t have to.”

He blinks in surprise. But he too shakes his head. “No… I… I think I did. Of all people, I have the most blood on my hands. I have to undo what I set in motion.”

Tifa hesitates. Then she puts her hands on his little shoulder and says, “Why don’t you tell me about it? What happened? What led you to do this?”

Cait Sith, Reeve-Tifa can see them both looking at her through this cat’s eyes like a child searching for their parent.

He tells her everything.

:

Following Zack’s fighting stances and motions with a sword feels like relearning an old language he forgot. Auron was always a standoffish teacher, who only showed Cloud a fighting stance _once_ , and then constantly corrected his posture afterwards. Zack, though… Cloud forgot how much fun it can be just to pretend spar with someone (even if Cloud can’t actually block a ghost-attack when it goes through him.)

It’s as Zack tells Cloud to attack again, his sword going through Zack’s shoulder… that Cloud has to pause.

“Tifa told me.”

Zack stares at him in confusion, the see-through outline of him as apparent then ever… Even his voice now has become more muted, the farther they get from Aerith’s power.

“About Nibelheim, I mean.”

Zack’s face clears in comprehension.

“She said… she said that you fought Sephiroth… and that she saw you both fall into a mako vat… So how _did_ you really die, Zack?”

Only Zack Fair could hear such an accusation and begin laughing as if Cloud told the funniest joke in the world.

“I’m serious!”

[Oh, I know you are,] Zack wipes an imaginary tear from his eye. [Don’t worry, buddy. I told you the truth. Yeah, so I _did_ fall into the vat, but like… barely. I managed to grab onto the edge and only Sephiroth fell completely in. My legs got the brunt of it and, god knows how, I pulled myself out and just… sort of passed out there until I woke up in some sort of lab. In a tank filled with mako.]

“ _What_.”

[Yeah, I was basically experimented on by some whack-job scientist in the basement of some manor before I escaped and tried to drag myself to Midgar. The rest you know. Somewhere along the line… I guess I died? I really don’t remember _how_ , but I did… Not the most exciting story, is it?]

“Zack, you were _experimented on_ and basically _tortured_. How are you okay with this?!”

[Well… I’m dead. Not much I can do about it. Not like complaining about it will help.]

“But it’s not fair!” Zack’s one of the best people that Cloud knows. For him to have survived all of that bullshit, just to _die_ alone… it’s just too cruel. Cloud wishes he could punch something, find the scientist that kept Zack from coming home and just… strangle him. But he can’t. Zack’s right. The scientist is probably dead and Zack’s dead too. What would be the point?

There’s so much that Cloud is powerless to change.

“Hey, are you… are you _crying?_ ”

Cloud hides his face behind his arm. “No. Maybe. I just… got something in my eye.”

A pause. Then—

Ghostly arms go around Cloud’s shoulders in a freezing hug, like being dunked into ice water, barely breathing. But Cloud doesn’t step back.

Zack needs this.

They both do.

Quietly, they both mourn the lost life of Zack Fair… and everything he could have done for the future.

:

“When things get fixed…” _when_ , Cloud has to keep telling himself, not _if_ , “and you go back to the lifestream… I’ll remember you. I promise. Everything you’ve taught me, the times we shared… I’ll share your story. You won’t be forgotten. I’ll avenge your death and… I’ll be your living legacy.”

Zack steps back, the cold drifting away. He gets that look in his eye, the one that he used to get if someone asked about Wutai.

“Cloud… thank you. But… you don’t need to do that. It’s enough that you’ll remember me and tell stories about me. You don’t need to _live_ for me. Live for _you_. I want to see what _Cloud Strife_ will do with his future. I don’t need to be avenged.”

Cloud narrows his eyes. “You’re telling me that the guy who betrayed you, who burned down a whole town, and stabbed you… doesn’t deserve to die? Or the scientist that tortured you?”

Zack’s face twists. “That’s not what I me—”

The PA system in the ship suddenly blares aloud. “Cloud! Zack! You should see this!” Tifa’s voice echoes through the walls.

Silently promising to continue the discussion later, Cloud and Zack rush up to the main deck.

They see the pilot controls set to autopilot, and Tifa pointing excitedly out the window. The sight of her so joyful and bright, the way she used to around birthdays, makes Cloud want to spin her around and join in her laughter. His entire being _yearns_ to take her hand, to just be _near_ her, but he stays a few inches apart.

He can’t be with her. Not yet. Not until he’s killed Sephiroth and made the world _safe_ for her and avenged Zack.

But he peers out the window anyways.

There, in the stretched-out fields and rivers a few yards before Nibelheim, are thousands and thousands of glowing green lilies. No, green isn’t the right word for them. The lilies are translucent, every fiber of them alight as if the stars have traced their glowing tears into the frame of each petal. Every glow of the lilies seems lovingly drawn by fireflies in floral form, a field of light leading its way to Nibelheim.

Cloud’s never seen flowers like these.

Zack whistles in appreciation while Tifa sighs in contentment. “They’re gorgeous…”

“They look like they’ve been infused with _literal_ mako!” Cait Sith jumps excitedly against the railings. “Imagine that… new life just… adapting to the end of the world, carrying on and evolving… who knows what other beings were made from the meteor blast…”

“They better not be poisonous,” Cloud shudders, thinking of the Jenova-seeds taking over human bodies… of Tidus…

“I don’t think they are… they _hum_ too, the same melody as the lifestream…” Tifa says. “I wish we had time to land and look at them closer… I wonder what they smell like…”

Suddenly, Cloud wants nothing more than to do just that. Land the airship, grab some flowers, present them to Tifa in a magnificent bouquet to watch her blush once more.

But she’s right.

They don’t have time.

He stretches out his hand towards her, despite his new vow to bury his feelings, but—

“Wait!” Cait Sith shouts. “What’s that?!”

Immediately, they all rush over to Cait Sith’s spot, peering at the strange sight before them. Several things happen at once. Zack almost disappears, flickering in and out as his face twists in a mix of hatred and _fear_. Tifa goes pale, her fists curled up tight. Cait Sith falls off the railing, murmuring, ‘It can’t be…’ over and over again.

There, in the field, is a figure standing with a pile of mismatched mechanical parts… Mechanical parts they seem to be using to hook up to a woman floating in a tank filled with mako.

Cloud recognizes the figure from his briefings as a mere grunt, taught to recognize those higher in command. Doctor Hojo was the rare individual from the science department that every grunt was taught to recognize on sight and protect. His mind and research were told to be revolutionary to the company’s ideals, to be protected at all cost but…

It clicks then.

The scientist that tortured Zack, the man responsible for Tifa’s injury, Cait Sith’s disbelief…

Rage fills Cloud.

“Land the ship.”

**Interlude: Reeve**

He should never have applied to work for Shinra. He should have just become a sales analyst instead. Or a librarian. Sure, Midgar didn’t have any work for librarians, but a man could dream.

But Reeve had dearly needed the money.

Not that it matters anymore. His mother died of cancer just before the world ended and his father was never there for him. Reeve had no one. Just his work. He could ignore what was happening at the company, with his coworkers, if he just told himself that it wasn’t his fault… he was just following orders… he was just _following orders…_

Until he couldn’t follow orders anymore.

Funny, he thinks.

He made Cait Sith on a whim, hoping to use Cait Sith to gather more data on civilians… try to make them happy even if he was using Cait Sith to spy on them. Maybe a part of him wanted to be seen, to act as if he wasn’t responsible for the most messed up shit on the planet. Maybe that’s why he put so much of himself into creating a childish persona… something that could tell the future even if he couldn’t.

And then he met them.

He always thought that the Cetra would be more… alien. But the girl that the Turks brought in… she was just a girl. Human. The other girl, apparently part of some activist group Avalanche, refused to leave the Cetra’s side. Such devotion… Reeve hadn’t seen it in a long time.

That devotion appeared again when the other Avalanche members came storming Shinra tower for their teammates. Even though there was only a few of them, and most of them died save for Barret Wallace, they still came.

He saw it again as the woman named Tifa Lockhart ambushed the guard coming to deliver her food to her cell and managed to break into Hojo’s lab, freeing Red XIII and the Cetra. He saw it when Tifa Lockhart faced Hojo’s terrible experiment and remained behind so her friends could escape.

He’s still not sure why he acted, why he hid her and helped her. But he did.

And then, as he watched Barret Wallace and Aerith Gainsborough travel the world, gain more companions, and _fight_ for what’s right… he began to lose himself.

(Or maybe… find himself again.)

By the time Reeve got sick of obeying, of pretending he wasn’t going to be compliant with what Shinra was doing anymore… it was too late.

Now he’s stuck here, locked up in this house with a bunch of strangers, waiting to see if the Jenova-seeds will kill them first or if Sephiroth will.

He’s done his best to copy Gainsborough, to be a comfort to the villagers hiding in the basement pub. He’s been unsuccessful, his gaunt face naturally grim. But if he gives up trying, well… he might just lose it too.

Only speaking through the computer connection as Cait Sith helps, seeing through Cait Sith’s eyes… gaining _hope_ , maybe… maybe repairing bonds… (if that’s even possible.)

He just hopes that Barret’s group reaches the Core Materia in Rocket Town, and the stranded villagers, in time.

“Shit!” There’s a crash upstairs. Screaming. “They’ve gotten into the main floor!”

“Bar the basement doors!” a woman, Shera, orders.

Reeve closes his eyes.

Well… he _did_ want to atone. Looks like Cait Sith will be on his own for a while…


	20. The Experiment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, sorry for the delay in updating! Some personal issues got in the way and I decided to tackle a different writing project to give myself a break. Also, writing Hojo is very unpleasant ahaha. Unfortunately, no more daily updates. I can promise that this fic will be done by the end of July though. So thank you for continuing to be patient. You are all so wonderful. Bless you all.
> 
> Updates will happen from anywhere between 1 - 7 days now depending on time and how I'm doing with my summer training course.

[We shouldn’t confront him,] Zack warns. [We have to get the Core Materia.]

“Then you and Tifa can go get it, Nibelheim is _right_ there. Just drop me off with my sword. Hojo needs to _pay_.”

“You are _not_ going in alone,” Tifa shakes her head. “Anything we do, we have to do together. Everyone has to agree on it. If we separate, we don’t know if any of the Jenova-seeds will appear and it’s better to take them on as a group than individuals.”

[Hence why _I_ vote we should pick up the Core Materia first,] Zack crosses his arms.

“Hojo might have answers about what’s going on. We can’t just leave him here to _live_ ,” Cloud points out. “We have to take him out here and now.”

Both Zack and Cloud look to Cait Sith and Tifa for their input.

“Reeve’s not answering me so we can’t get a tie-breaker vote,” Cait Sith shrugs. “I wouldn’t worry about it, he’s probably trying to raise morale with the Rocket Town survivors so I’m going to sit this vote out. But honestly, the clock _is_ ticking. We should really get that Core Materia first,. ”

“Tifa?” Cloud turns to her, silently imploring with all his being that she stand with his selfish request.

She bites her bottom lip in a way that Cloud really shouldn’t focus on right now, so much worry and dread knitted into her very being, before she nods. “Hojo has a hostage down there, a woman trapped in one of his experiments. Yes, we don’t have a lot of time… but it’s _because_ we don’t have a lot of time that we should save her first. Life, right now… it’s so precious. We should save as many survivors as we can. We save her quickly, _knock out_ Hojo and keep him prisoner, and then we go get the Core Materia.”

[Fine,] Zack agrees easily to this. [The two of you can probably knock him out quickly.]

Cloud doesn’t like the idea of tying Hojo up as a prisoner when it would be simpler to kill him but Tifa reads the anger on his face and shakes her face.

“I know how frustrated you’re feeling. But Hojo’s wronged more people than just me and Zack. We should take him back to Cosmo Canyon and have everyone judge what his punishment should be. Death is… death is _too easy_ for him, Cloud.”

He wants to argue. What’s worse than death after all, he almost wants to say. Everyone he loves is dead. Everyone but Tifa. And yet… _and yet_ … the way Tifa clenches her teeth, the fiery anger that wants to jump out of her eyes, tells Cloud exactly how she feels.

She wants Hojo dead too.

Cloud turns around. “Just land the ship.”

He can _feel_ Tifa and Zack frowning at him. “So you agree to the plan?”

He closes his eyes, everything in his being screaming to stab Hojo where it hurts. “We save the woman. If it’s easier to kill Hojo or take him captive at the time, we’ll see.”

“ _Cloud_ ,” Tifa says, in a way that makes him want to turn back and apologize, to be _better_ , but he can’t grant her this. Hojo is a vile human being that doesn’t deserve to be called human. Hojo has to _die_.

But…

“I’ll… try.”

A pause. They both know that Cloud’s lying. But he has to do this. Men like Hojo… they’re so selfish. _They caused the world to end_. If it hadn’t been for Hojo’s experiments on Jenova, none of this would have happened. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Tifa and Zack continue arguing with him or if they press against his lie. He can’t stand to let them down, but he can’t stand to let Hojo breathe any longer.

And then—

“Fine. I’ll land the ship. But we only have one shot at surprising Hojo. Cait Sith, go with Cloud to subdue Hojo. I’ll try to free the woman.”

[And I’ll be the annoying alarm to remind you all to keep things quick,] Zack chimes in. Wonderful.

Cloud doesn’t look either of them in the eyes. After another uncomfortable pause, Tifa turns towards the ship’s controls and she moves the airship in.

:

The hum of the glowing flowers below, a hazy fog of pale green like jade, thrums louder even against the roaring engine of the airship. Their song is like an overwhelming choir of millions of organisms trapped behind a muddled curtain of distant stars, yet even so, Cloud can hear the flowers anxiously humming over the engines.

They’ll never get the drop on Hojo this way. He’ll see them coming and run.

Cloud doesn’t think. He pulls the level to open the backdoor of the ship, and with Cait Sith hanging onto his shoulder, he rushes out the backdoor. Tifa doesn’t see, busy at the pilot seat, but Zack does, his screams chasing after Cloud as Cloud and Cait Sith land in the sea of glowing flowers. The petals fly up around him, like an army of frazzled fireflies, and Cloud pulls out his sword.

“Did you just jump out of an airship?!” Cait Sith hisses, fur ramrod straight like he’s been hit by lightning.

Cloud ignores him, focusing instead on Hojo who only raises a brow at him.

“Well then—” Hojo starts, but Cloud doesn’t let him finish that sentence.

He moves forward, swinging his sword towards Hojo’s neck, while Zack shouts at him to stop. The airship whirls around the field, landing closer to the flowers, petals rising up like a glowing tidal wave all around.

But somehow Hojo dodges Cloud’s strikes, despite looking like he hasn’t trained a day in his life.

“Get,” swing, “Over,” slice, “Here!”

“Hm,” Hojo dodges and ducks through swings that no normal civilian could get away from, “I think not. I still have research to do, and you’re getting in my way.”

Cloud nearly roars at him.

“You don’t seem to be a full-fledged SOLDIER. Your movements are too slow. Seems like you must have rejected the mako injections or you weren’t the right fit. Judging from your impulsive personality,” Hojo somehow keeps monologuing despite all the attacks Cloud sends at him, “I suspect the latter is true, but then again Sephiroth went rogue so who am I to judge?”

Cloud pauses in his attacks. “You knew Sephiroth?”

“He’s a higher-up in Shinra, involved in making the first SOLDIERs, of course he knew him, now can we _not_ talk with the crazy scientist?!” Cait Sith hisses to him from his shoulder.

The airship has landed behind him, Zack already floating towards Cloud and Hojo in frustration. The roar of the engines begin to die down just as Zack shouts, [Cloud, what are you doing, knock him out!]

Torn between wanting answers or vengeance, Cloud hesitates.

That moment of hesitation is all Hojo needs to strike. He digs his hands into his pockets and presses the button to a remote that seems to light up the crudely assembled machine holding the woman floating in the glass tank. The plastic tubes connected to her tank like sickened veins light up with an eerie green, the kind of creeping green that mold bears, bubbling up in the liquid trapping the woman inside.

The woman’s eyes open, glowing bright mako green, her curly blond hair all wild behind her like tentacles. Then the glass cracks in her tank, and shards blast everywhere.

Cloud ducks, shielding Cait Sith, and Tifa rushes out the airship just as glass shards fly towards her face. She rolls out of the blast range, though a few shards get her hands and legs.

“Tifa!” Cloud calls, wanting to bundle her up and hide her back in the airship, but Hojo’s cackling drowns out his cry.

The woman in the tank begins to stand, eyes still aglow as she surveys the field of luminescent flowers.

“…Hojo?” the woman whispers.

“My dear Lucrecia,” Hojo croons, his voice like sludge creeping into Cloud’s ears. “We have a few guests that I need you to eliminate. But do capture the rejected SOLDIER, I could use him for further experiments…”

“Lucrecia…?” Cait Sith whispers in horror.

“You _know_ her?” Cloud hisses back to him.

“Not really, I’ve heard of her! She’s the scientist who worked on Sephiroth’s transition to the SOLDIER program before she died. What’s she doing alive?! I don’t understand… Reeve’s not answering me either! Of all the damn times for him to be distracted on his laptop!” Cait Sith nearly tears out his own ears.

“What’s he done to her…?” Tifa murmurs a distance away, her bleeding hands held against her mouth in horror.

This Lucrecia has green glowing lines stretching out over her body, all of her veins look like they’re on fire in mako-light. She’s almost like the construct of a person, a glowing entity that could collapsed into a thousand fairy lights with a single touch, or perhaps she could burn up everything with a single step. When Cloud looks down at Lucrecia’s feet, he sees the dead flowers, withered and ashen under her…

“I’ve improved her!” Hojo boasts. “Combined her with a higher lifeform, the calamity that fell from the sky, so she could birth my son. And now she and my son will rise up and create a new world!”

[What the hell?!] Zack, now by Cloud’s side, actually shakes. [Is this what you experimented on me for?!]

Hojo barely glances at Zack’s ghostly form. “Oh. It’s you. The failure. You’re _dead_ , what do you care? You have no use in the world anymore.”

Cloud points his sword at Hojo. “Don’t say that to him!”

“Why not?” Hojo looks honestly confused. “It’s true. He’s dead now. He’s insignificant. All he’s useful for is fuel for Lucrecia, Sephiroth, Jenova… and myself.”

Cloud and Zack recoil in disgust. “You’re one of them? A Jenova-seed?” Cloud hasn’t seen a Jenova-Seed this… coherent before. He finds it hard to believe. And if it’s true, then it’s unfair. Tidus didn’t get the chance to keep his humanity, why should this scum keep his?

“Not yet,” Hojo reveals, though he does take out a glass vial with a red pulsing seed within it, “but I _will_ be.”

“Stop this!” Tifa rushes over to their group, while Lucrecia hovers ominously a few inches above the ground. “Why are you doing this?! The world is already dead, you don’t need to give yourself to Jenova!”

“Hm!” Hojo’s eyes light up in sick delight. “Your leg healed extraordinarily well. You’d be a good candidate for my experiments too. Lucrecia,” he addresses the silent glowing woman, “perhaps leave her alive as well—”

“No!” Cloud steps in front of Tifa. “You’re not getting _any more_ of my people to fuck up! You’re not going to create more Jenova experiments, you’re going to _die_ , here any now!”

“Cloud!” Tifa touches his elbow.

“Get back to the ship, Tifa. We can’t save anyone here. Go get the Core Materia.”

“No, I’m not leaving you—!”

But their argument gets cut by Lucrecia rushing towards them both, hands outstretched to grab one of them, and Tifa tackles Cloud out of the way.

Tifa and Cloud fall painfully against flower petals and leaves, rolling to a stop with Tifa curled up on top of him. Pain stings at all of Cloud’s nerves, making it hard to move or even think, but he manages to jump up and move Tifa out of the way when Lucrecia chases them.

Lucrecia moves like an alien creature. One blink, and she’s suddenly in front of Cloud, hands nearly grabbing his arm, but Cloud ducks, dragging Tifa away. Another blink, and she nearly gets Tifa by the hair.

Cloud wants to counterattack, but his arms are full of Tifa, and he really only has his sword. Tifa tries to move out of his hold, to strike back at Lucrecia, but a strange feeling screams in Cloud to hold Tifa close, to avoid touching Lucrecia.

When Cloud looks beneath Lucrecia’s feet, he understands.

Everywhere that Lucrecia has moved, or stepped, the glowing flowers have been drained of their colour and vitality. Every drop of mako and life within the flowers has been sucked up until nothing but shrivelled up petals are left.

If Lucrecia touches either Cloud and Tifa, what will happen to them?

If this is what Lucrecia is like, what about Sephiroth?

“Shit,” Cloud hears Tifa mutter, as she realizes the same truth. “We can’t fight her directly!”

Hojo laughs maniacally in the background.

Zack appears in front of them, a determined glint in his eyes. [I’ll distract her, you guys get back to the ship!]

“Wait!” Cait Sith cries out from Cloud’s shoulder. “We should destroy Hojo’s machine. Whatever he’s doing, it’s sucking up the life from the flowers. We can’t let him build more.”

Cloud scowls. In the end, it all comes back to Hojo. Letting him live will just further poison their world.

He and Tifa lock eyes. For a moment, just this moment, time doesn’t seem to matter. The weary but soft red in Tifa’s eyes radiates nothing but trust, despite the disagreements they had before they came to this situation.

Hojo is too big a threat now.

Wordlessly, he and Tifa come to an agreement. When Zack moves in front of Lucrecia to distract her, Cloud lets Tifa go.

He runs to Hojo, sword ready to take his head, and Tifa rushes to the machine to destroy it.

Hojo keeps moving so damn quickly that Cloud suspects that he’s already been injected with Jenova cells at least, if not the Jenova seed. Cloud can’t seem to land a hit, while Hojo leisurely hops back and forth, arms tucked behind him as if this is a mere training exercise.

Behind him, Lucrecia has rushed past Zack, draining more flowers as she moves towards Tifa. Cloud wants to turn around, to stop her, but he has to trust that Tifa will destroy the machine in time and get to safety. There’s no room for arguments or doubt.

Several things happen all at once, all too much for Cloud to absorb at once.

Tifa punches the machine, her fire materia setting the whole thing in a blaze, combined with another dose of lightning.

The machine begins to break down, gurgling in thrashing ribbons of green light.

Lucrecia descends up on Tifa, despite Zack’s attempts to stop her.

Cloud’s sword manages to hack off Hojo’s arm, the gore and blood staining the flowers below in darkness.

And Hojo shoves the vial of Jenova Seed into his own mouth.

The machine explodes, Tifa, Lucrecia, and Zack engulfed in the blast.

And Hojo transforms, his skin bubbling apart, revealing only bulbous mutations of muscle that begin to twitch and trash around.

Cloud has no time to scream.

What once was Hojo tosses him across the field, and Cloud has no time to think before it all goes dark, and he sees what once was a peaceful field of mako-glowing-flowers, begin to twist and tear itself apart.

**Interlude: Shera**

They’re all going to die, Shera thinks, as she and Reeve attempt to guard the only other exit out of the pub’s basement.

The Jenova-Seeds have burst into the basement pub, and what’s left of Rocket Town has been corralled against the emergency exit. Tom, the pub owner, has a secret ladder that leads up to the rooftop. What little patrons he has left, have been scrambling to climb up the ladder, leaving them vulnerable.

Neither Shera nor Reeve have high combat capabilities, but they aren’t going to let anymore innocent people get caught up in this. Reeve has some sort of guilt he’s trying to atone for, and Shera? Well, Shera knows no one will care if she dies. Not even Cid.

She tries not to let that hurt, focusing on hitting back the Jenova-Seeds with the axe that Tom lent her. She wants her last memories of Cid to be the good ones, of his smiles when he talked about going to the moon, of the way he picked her up for joy when he got chosen to be Shinra’s Space program. Beside her, Reeve does no better, swatting the creatures back with his flimsy laptop as if that will hurt them. But that isn’t the point. They know they can’t win against these creatures.

They just need to buy time. They just need to hope that someone, somewhere, got their distress signal and will come.

“Shit!” Reeve looks ready to dive after his laptop when it gets crushed in half.

“Here!” Shera tosses him her axe, picking up a chair instead to keep the hoards back.

“That’s the last of them!” Tom calls out when the last patron climbs up the ladder. “Get over here, Shera, Reeve! I’ll hold them off!”

“Tom—” Shera shakes her head.

“I ain’t gonna argue with ya, Shera. You’re climbing up that ladder. I’ve lived a long life, you’re just starting yours now _go!_ ” Tom picks her up, tossing her up the ladder.

Shera shrieks, hands flailing as those up on the roof grab her hands and pull her up. “No!” Tom’s not supposed to die. He’s one of the bright spots in the town, so many people rely on him. Not like Shera, who can’t do _anything right_ — “Tom!”

But Reeve gets tossed up after her, while Tom roars at them to shut the emergency exit, and then—

Impossibly—

She hears him.

Her captain.

Calling out her name.

Shera looks up at the sky, and there… a ship she never thought she’d see again, the _Highwind_ , flies near.

He came for her.

(No, he didn’t come for her, he came for everyone else because he has a good soul, but that doesn’t mean Shera is special.)

“Tom!” Shera cries down the ladder, “Hurry, climb up! There’s an airship! We’re going to be rescued, just _climb up!_ ”

The _Highwind_ rushes in so quickly, that the Rocket Town survivors have to hold onto the shingles so they won’t fly off the pub’s roof. Shera sees Tom desperately climbing up, the Jenova Seeds trying to climb up after him. She reaches down to grab him, pulling him up and quickly shuts the trap door on top of the Jenova-Seed’s hand.

It shrieks at her, struggling with the trapdoor, its hand jerking about on the roof, hunting for anyone to grab. Shera kicks it down, putting all her weight on the trapdoor to keep it shut.

All around her, the _Highwind_ ’s engines roar. She thinks she can hear other passengers landing on the roof, helping the survivors get onto the ship. Barret, she recalls, and that ninja girl Yuffie.

Beneath Shera, the Jenova-Seed bangs against the trapdoor, sending her sprawling back as the Jenova-Seed bursts out of the trap door, lunching for her leg, and Shera shuts her eyes—

“ _Get the HELL away from MY WIFE!_ ” Her captain, her _Cid_ , roars, jumping down on the Jenova-Seed with his lance, skewering it through the head.

Shera has no idea what to say, how to react. That was a person, once, she knows, but she’s just so _glad_ to see Cid that she doesn’t care anymore, doesn’t care if he hates her, doesn’t care if the world has ended, she _got to see him_ , once last time—

“What the hell is that?!” Yuffie gasps.

Shera turns to see where Yuffie is pointing, there, coming in fast at the town’s border… is a man with silver hair, a man who has been on so many Shinra Military recruitment posters. Sephiroth. Coming towards them, holding onto a strange jewel.

“Shit, are you kidding me?! He has the core materia?!” Yuffie hisses out. “How’d he find it so fast?!”

“Forget that, he’s going to pass us in _seconds_ , he must be after the one at Nibelheim. Yuffie, go call Tifa on the radio. Warn her! Nanaki, you’re with me. Cid, get Shera and Reeve out of here!” Barret orders, jumping down to stand in Sephiroth’s way.

“What are you going to do?! You can’t touch him, he’s like that Jenova-thing Cloud and Tifa told us about! He’ll kill you if he touches you!”

Barret lifts up his gun arm, a manic smile on his face. “Good thing I won’t really be touching him.”


	21. The Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so so much for continuing to follow along this humble little story. Much love!!

Everything is burning again. That’s the thought that snakes its way around Tifa’s throat, as she chokes on the smell of smoke and burnt flesh.

Ah, she tries to move her fingers, her own flesh.

As her vision, blurred as if she’s trapped underwater, slowly clears, she realizes that her gloves are half burned off, and her skin has begun to turn an ugly crusted red. She should heal it, she thinks absently, but she doesn’t think she has enough energy to do it. Heat competes with her thoughts, eating every thought that could save her.

She tries to move one knee forward, ignores her entire body stinging in flames. Slowly her vision adjusts, bobbing in and out of that blurred daze until she realizes that she’s staring at the charred remains of so many flowers…

“Cloud…” she murmurs, searching for any sign of him.

Hojo’s strange machine lies in burned shambles. The blast radius, a circle of dark ash and metal, remains thankfully contained. Not too large.

As Tifa wobbles up on her feet, she spies two other bodies on the ground, also beginning to stand. The woman, Lucrecia, still aglow with her strange markings… and the thing that had once been Doctor Hojo.

_But where’s Cloud?_

She tells herself to breathe. She tells herself that she’s not sixteen anymore. She tells herself that she already watched her father die. Cloud is fine, he’s _fine_. He’s not dead yet. His body is no where to be seen. Neither is Cait Sith.

[Tifa!] Zack flickers in front of her, his image fading in and out. [Are you alright?!]

“I’m…” she winces, “fine! Have you seen Cloud?!”

[No, I think Hojo threw him all the way to the outskirts of Nibelheim.]

Her eyes widen. To be able to throw a person that far… how powerful is Hojo now? What kind of monster has he evolved into?

“Go find him then. You two can get the Core Materia. I’ll distract Hojo and Lucrecia.”

Zack scowls. [I’m not leaving you alone with him!]

“You’re the only one who knows where the Core Materia is, Zack! And you can’t help me fight them. Please,” she shows off the materia still secured on her glove, “I’ll make sure not to get too close.”

With a frustrated frown, Zack nods. [ _Fine!_ But you better stay in one piece, Lockhart! If you show up in the Lifestream, I swear to all that’s Holy, I’ll kick you out!]

She can see why Cloud likes him. “I’ll do my best.”

Eyes narrowed, still clearly torn, Zack hisses out, [I’ll be back as soon as I can. Just _hold on_ , Lockhart.] Then he vanishes.

Tifa barely has time to strategize how she’ll attack when Lucrecia nearly punches her in the stomach. Only Tifa’s constant training lets her duck out of the way just in time and Tifa only just thinks to follow up with a trail of fire from her fists as Lucrecia charges at her again and again.

Master Zangan’s thorough training lets Tifa jumps back with ease. She nearly falls over from the pain all over her body but the adrenaline quickly helps her ignore it. She finds herself quickly switching spells, fire, cure, fire, cure, her weariness increasing with every bit of vitality the spells steal from her.

“Why are you doing this?!” Tifa cries out to Lucrecia. “He can’t control you anymore!” She gestures to the thing that was once Hojo, sniffing at the air, about to head to Nibelheim.

For a moment, a flicker of confusion passes through those eerie eyes. “Control?” she echoes monotonously, like those voices about to announce the next stop on a train, “I’m not being controlled. I love him.”

Tifa blanches in part disgust, part disbelief. “You _love_ him?! After what he did to you?!”

Her words seem to slow Lucrecia down, giving Tifa little more room to breathe. “We have a son together. We are in love. He’s going to change the world.”

 _He already has_ , Tifa thinks, _look what happened_.

“And where is that son now?” she asks instead, not wanting to hear the answer. Perhaps that son died. Perhaps he was used for their line of work. Perhaps their son means nothing at all.

But then Lucrecia staggers, like Tifa has struck her, and she murmurs, “My son… Sephiroth… I… _I…_ ”

Her face, before so doll-like, twists in agony, so much that Tifa almost forgets what Lucrecia could do to her, so much that Tifa wants to reach out and ask what Hojo did to her.

She doesn’t get to ask.

A dark blur in the sky races towards them, landing in front of the thing that was once Hojo, Lucrecia, and Tifa. Ashes of petals rise up like in a dust storm, nearly obscuring the intruder from view, but once Tifa catches sight of the long silver hair and cold eyes, everything in her goes cold.

It’s Sephiroth.

And in his clutches, he holds Barret’s metal gun-hand with Barret in nowhere in sight.

:

Cloud aches all over, too much for him to be dead. He coughs out blood, iron sour against his tongue, before he manages to pull himself up.

He’s somewhere on the outskirts of fake Nibelheim, banged up and bruised. He… may have injured his ribs or his legs. Quickly, he casts several cure spells on himself to mitigate the damage. The major injuries are gone, but he still feels the ghostly echoes of pain.

His sword is gone, likely thrown in another direction when Monster-Hojo threw him across the field. Cloud needs to find it, no, wait, he has no idea how long he’s been unconscious. He should find Tifa. And the annoying Cait Sith too. She could be hurt or worse—

A crowd of ghosts block Cloud’s path, their hazy glows like silvery curtains drawn over Cloud’s vision. Cloud recognizes them… the ghosts of the ones who pretended to be lifelong Nibelheim citizens, the Shinra liars.

“What the hell do you want?” Cloud hisses. “Why are you still here when you should be keeping the planet together like every other ghost? Get out of my way!”

The ghosts shake their heads, pointing instead to the old Shinra mansion within the town.

“I’m not going anywhere you’re telling me unless it helps me help Tifa,” or to kill Hojo, “now scram!”

[Hojo’s labratory,] the ghosts yell at him, [it’s there! More experiments too! Terrible experiments! Awakening!]

What anger Cloud has sinks out of him, replaced by fear. “What?!”

More experiments like Lucrecia? Here in Nibelheim? He recalls what Zack told him about his captivity and Hojo’s proximity to Nibelheim as he tried to awaken Lucrecia. It makes sense that his machine must have been scavenged by nearby… his old laboratory perhaps… and if more of his experiments awake, then Tifa and Cloud will never get out of here alive.

Cloud has to stop them.

“Lead the way,” he tells the ghosts.

And they do.

:

Zack finds the Core Materia dug into the walls of one of the nearby houses, Cait Sith already there pulling it out.

[Cait Sith! Where’s Cloud?!]

“Hell if I know,” the cat scowls at him. “ _I’m_ actually doing my job. When I got thrown across the town like Cloud, I woke up here. I’ll sneak the materia onto the ship. You go find Cloud. I won’t be much help with that.”

With how beat up Cait Sith looks, his little ears and limbs about to rip at the seams, Zack agrees. Once he sees Cait Sith successfully pull out the Core Materia, he nods. [Stay safe, don’t let them catch you!]

“I’d say the same but…” Cait Sith attempts to shrug, the Core Materia nearly dwarfing him.

Zack moves on to hunt through the town, the empty and ruined roads.

_Come on, Cloud, where are you…?_

:

Cloud’s never run so fast in his life, fear feeding his every step. He can’t let another experiment run wild, he can’t. He runs so fast, he doesn’t bother to take in the ruined state of the mansion. Books and furniture pushed out of the way to make room for Hojo’s machines… signs of struggle against the walls…

[This way,] the ghost shows Cloud how to activate the hidden staircase. [You’ll find two rooms down there, and the experiments. I… _we’re_ sorry. I’d say that we were just doing our jobs, playing our roles in this town… but it was all so pointless. Everything we did… meant nothing, and I know it means nothing now… but I’m sorry.]

This person… was the one that eventually told Cloud where Tifa was. Even if Cloud had had to threaten them in the end… they were the reason why he found Tifa.

Cloud doesn’t know much about forgiveness. He himself feels so guilty for not-acting, for playing the role of soldier, for not following his heart until it was too late.

“…There’s nothing to forgive,” he says instead, and then he descends into the staircase.

:

Hojo’s lab looks exactly like what Cloud would expect from an evil lair—aging textbooks and lab reports strewn across shelves and the floors, rusty machines lit up with different dials and switches, a large wooden coffins covered up in metal locks for some reason, human-sized metal tables to inspect victims… and three glass tubes… two of them empty… one of them very much not.

Cloud falters, shaking as he sees who’s inside.

The body of Zack Fair, sewn up with the limbs and features of monsters.

This is, of course, when the wooden coffin begins to shake open, all locks falling apart.

**Interlude: Lucrecia**

Lucrecia doesn’t remember what happened Before the glass tank that she slept in. Hojo says that she’s always been there, that she was remade for him, that she will help him reshape the world. Hojo says that she’s perfect because he made her that way. Hojo says he loves her and that should be enough, she doesn’t need more, she’s never needed more.

She thinks… she had a son once. She says so, to the woman that Hojo wants to capture to be perfected.

The woman would look beautiful with glowing veins and eyes like Lucrecia’s, the woman would be a devastating weapon alongside Lucrecia.

And then the woman asks what happened to Lucrecia’s son and she… she…

She can’t remember… ( _I’m having a baby, let’s make him perfect, let’s inject him with a little more, it’ll be fine, Lucrecia, I love you, Lucrecia, I’m doing this for you, Lucrecia, our baby will be the future of humankind, Lucrecia, our baby will lead us to the promised land, Lucrecia, Lucrecia, Lucrecia,_ and the image of cute little green eyes that will never look at her with that innocence again because she allowed him to be tainted, _her Sephiroth—_ )

 _Oh stars,_ Lucrecia begins to remember, as she looks upon her grown son and his twisted form, merged with the alien Jenova, _what have I done?_

 **F e e d m e m o r e,** the Jenova cells within her whisper.

And they force her to obey.


	22. The Soldier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i tried. thank you so much for supporting me, love you all!!! You have no idea how much it means for me when you support this fic in particular. part 1 of a 2-part update today.

“…Barret…” Tifa stares at that metal arm, the arm that Barret used to hide from her when she was sixteen and alone in the city. The arm that she insisted helped protect people. The arm that wrapped around her when she broke down with grief from all that had happened to her. The arm that led her into Avalanche and a new family. Broken. Mangled. Separated from Barret.

 _It’s happening all over again. I’m losing my family_.

The day Nibelheim burned down, the day the world ended, and now here, while she’s trying to find the pieces that will put the world back together—why does she keep losing her families? Why does she keep living, alone and powerless?

Why can’t she _move_ when the monster from her nightmares has returned?

Sephiroth doesn’t even acknowledge her or Lucrecia, eyes scanning the scorched field until he narrows in on the thing that used to be Hojo, trying to upright itself onto ground. “There you are,” he says, as if scolding some stray pet. “Return to Mother.” He stretches out his hands.

Suddenly, the thing that was once Hojo’s face twists and turns, like the layers of muscle around its face are _alive_ somehow, some separate alien being that’s tearing itself off of Hojo’s biology, stretching out towards Sephiroth in lurching and bubbling tendrils. What’s left of Hojo howls and screams as more and more flesh twists off, latching onto Sephiroth’s arm and molding into Sephiroth’s body, a terrible symbiosis.

“N-no!” the thing that used to be Hojo tries to speak, “I am your _father—_ ”

“And you’re only human,” Sephiroth says, as the last of the Jenova cells from Hojo, the last of Hojo’s flesh, merge into Sephiroth’s body, disappearing as if it had never been there at all. “Useless to me.”

Tifa can only watch as only Hojo’s skeleton remains, crumpling into the leftovers of his machine. Dust. Gone without so much as a scream.

“Now then,” Sephiroth lifts up his own arm, clenching and unclenching his fists, as if to see if his fingers still work, “to collect the other parts of Mother…” His sharp gaze turns towards Lucrecia. “Come.”

Lucrecia’s foot spasms, moving forward towards Sephiroth, as if Lucrecia has become an automation doll for him to move. The other woman’s lips tremble and shake, her eyes wide, not yet comprehending who is before her.

“No, no,” she whispers, sounding like nothing but a scared human being for the first time, “I don’t want this. I never wanted this. You weren’t supposed to turn into her, Sephiroth.”

He doesn’t appear to care or hear what Lucrecia says. Instead his brow furrows. “I said, _come_.”

Lucrecia shakes, her glowing veins shining all the brighter, but her skin and flesh do not fall apart from her like Hojo’s did. She remains remarkably whole.

With a deeper frown, Sephiroth drops his hand, stepping towards Lucrecia. Barret’s metal gun-arm drops to his feet, forgotten, like a mere footnote instead of the arm that helped Tifa stand back up in Midgar.

Fury burns through Tifa’s soul as she steps in front of Lucrecia, fists raised.

Sephiroth pauses, as if Tifa’s presence has finally registered to him. He surveys her, likely contemplating if she’s worth fighting or merely swatting away like a fly. Tifa knows she can’t fight him on her own. If Barret’s party and Aerith together couldn’t defeat him, what hope does she have alone?

But she won’t let Sephiroth have Lucrecia, even if Lucrecia tried to kill her. Sephiroth can’t be allowed live without regretting what he did to Barret and Nibelheim and all the other souls in Midgar.

She might die here. She might accomplish nothing.

But at the very least, she can slow him down.

“Step aside,” Sephiroth says, as if he isn’t a monster.

“No.” Tifa stays. Behind her, Lucrecia trembles.

He stares at her a little longer before his face finally shifts into one of recognition. “Oh. You’re that little girl. The one who tried to stab me before… Tifa, was it? I’m impressed that you survived. I thought I was thorough.”

She raises her fists higher. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“No.” His gaze slowly moves down, observing her from head to toe. Something like amusement ripples across his face, as if he can feel such things anymore. “I suppose you’re not. Well, I suppose I could indulge you. ‘Mother’ can wait,” Lucrecia makes a wounded noise at this, “and I am feeling a bit nostalgic about my last days as a Soldier… Come then, little Tifa. Try and stop me.”

She does not cry recklessly and charge like she did when she was sixteen, holding her father’s corpse. She turns back to Lucrecia, face carefully blank. “If you can, run. Buy me more time. If you ever loved your son at all, you won’t let him take what he needs from you.”

Lucrecia’s body shakes, her hands twitch at her side like fish brought to land, trying to find the sea. “What about you?”

Tifa turns back towards Sephiroth.

She answers with her fists.

 _Sorry Cloud,_ she thinks, as she lands the first few hits, _I guess I won’t be telling you my secret anymore._

:

Cloud grabs the nearest weapon he can, a broken piece of pipe and whips it at the man coming out of the coffin. Fast reflexes from the man have him catching the broken pipe like a cat snatching prey and Cloud backs up against the wall, fumbling for more possible weapons.

The man, pale with long black hair and a ridiculous red cloak, narrows his eyes at him. “You’re loud,” he says.

Cloud stares at him. “ _What_.”

“I’ve been trying to sleep. Stop being so loud and stomping everywhere.”

“You just _opened_ a locked coffin from the _inside_ , in the middle of a clearly _evil_ laboratory, and you’re complaining about _sleep?!_ ”

The likely-a-vampire-man’s brows furrow as he finally notices the room he’s in, the glass tubes, the mutilated corpse of Zack Fair suspended in liquid. “This… is not where I put my coffin ten years ago.”

Cloud does not have time to process the fact that this man has apparently been sleeping for ten years.

“Look, are you working for Hojo or not? If you aren’t, then help me get… get him out of here,” Cloud points at the body that he refuses to call ‘Zack,’ “and if you are then you better get back in that coffin before I make you.”

“ _Hojo_ ,” the vampire man sneers in pure hate. “That man has none of my loyalty. He’s the one that ruined me… who ruined my beloved Lucrecia…”

“Lucrecia…?” Cloud steps away from the wall. “So, you’re an experiment like her?”

“What Hojo does can’t be called anything as innocent as an ‘experiment.’ It’s inhumane.”

“Hey, I’m not arguing with you. I agree. After we get… get _him_ out of that tank and destroy this lab, I’m going to go kill Hojo.”

The man seems to park up in interest. “Kill him? Then I’m coming.”

“Oh, uh, cool. I guess,” Cloud nods as the man begins to get up to help him with… with the body. “Do you have a name?”

The man moves surprisingly fast for someone who’s been sleeping for ten years. “Vincent. And you?”

“Cloud. Listen, do you know how any of this works? We gotta hurry. Lucrecia’s up there still, with Hojo, and Tifa’s alone—”

Vincent’s stance falters. “She… she’s alive?”

Cloud glares at the control panel connected to the body’s glass tube. “Considering she tried to kill us, yes. Definitely alive. And messed up.” Cloud pauses. “ _You_ aren’t injected with Jenova cells too… are you?”

Vincent’s lips twist. “No. I’m a very different kind of monster. Rather like this man,” Vincent refers to the body in the glass tube, “a combination of various monsters. As far as I know, Hojo never injected me with Jenova cells. I fell asleep for so long…”

“Uh… are you… okay?”

A blank stare is all Cloud received in reply.

Cloud has no idea what to say to this man who may or may not be unhinged. He wishes Tifa were here instead. She’s better with people. She’d know what to do. Cloud doesn’t even want to begin explaining to Vincent that the world ended while he slept, he just needs to get out of here and burn this damned place to the ground.

Hell, if Vincent and… and the body… are also like Lucrecia and begin attacking Cloud, then he’s screwed. But he saw Vincent’s hate for Hojo… it’s real.

“…At least you’ll be able to fight,” Cloud says lamely. “I lost my weapon and I’m not exactly the greatest at hand-to-hand.” He doesn’t mention how Vincent should be glad that he still has his own mind. Cloud has no idea how sane Lucrecia is. He finds himself grateful that Zack isn’t residing in… in this body right now. Probably for the best.

Vincent’s glower grows darker. “If you’re correct about Lucrecia then we should hurry.” He lifts up his arm and punches at the glass tube, making it shatter into tiny pieces, the fluid suspending Zack’s body pouring out of the jagged prison.

“Hey, watch it! You could hurt him!” Cloud hisses, grabbed onto the unfamiliar form of Zack’s corpse. Whatever monsters that Hojo combined Zack with, they had scales… and long claws, tiny horns that line the body’s back, making it hard for Cloud to lift him up.

“He’s dead, isn’t he? I don’t hear a pulse.”

“He still deserves respect! Now help me get him out of the house, we can leave him at the entrance and circle back after we take care of Hojo and Lucrecia. Wait, maybe we should burn down the mansion first—”

A loud blast from upstairs makes dust rain down from the ceiling. And then another, and another—

“Tifa!”

“Lucrecia!”

Vincent and Cloud immediately begin moving the body up the stairs. They make it to the first few steps of the spiral staircase, the blasts from upstairs getting louder and louder. Cloud can tell that Vincent wants to leave Zack’s body behind, but something (perhaps guilt) makes him stay and help. They’re a third of the way up the staircase when Zack suddenly appears in front of Cloud, alive and human and very-much-ghost-dead and _pissed_.

[ _Cloud,_ where have you been?! Cait Sith’s got the Core Materia, we need to leave because Tifa’s fighting Hojo and Lucrecia _alone_ —wait, is that my body?!]

Vincent drops Zack’s body, all of the weight falling onto Cloud’s shoulder. “You… are a ghost.”

[Never mind that, it’s the end of the world. Of course, I’m a ghost. More importantly, _is that my body and what the hell happened to it_.]

“I don’t know, it’s _your_ body! Found it in Hojo’s creepy murder basement,” Cloud hisses out. “Think you can like… help? Also, _why is Tifa fighting them alone?!_ ”

[It’s not like I could help! I’m dead! Cait Sith is a walking plushie!] Zack waves his arms. [And like I said, _I’m dead,_ I can’t just repossess my own body, it’s not even breathing!]

“But it was your body!”

“Is this really the time to argue?” Vincent snaps, deciding to ask his questions later.

The resounding crash up above them gives them their answer. Vincent and Cloud resume their efforts to bring the body up the stairs but Zack just hisses, [Leave it! I don’t need a burial, go help the Living!]

“But—” Cloud’s heart wavers. Everything inside of himself wars against leaving Zack’s body there but he’s right. Cloud clenches his fists, moving the body to the sitting position on the floor. “I’ll come back to give you a proper burial. I promise.”

Zack meets his gaze. [That’s all I can ask, buddy. Now _go!_ ]

Vincent and Cloud don’t need telling twice.

But neither of them notice Zack’s body begin to twitch…

**Interlude: Vincent**

The entirety of Shinra Mansion has been obliterated, only a hole on the main floor leaving to what’s left of the side room left. No walls, no ceiling, Vincent is not a man to show his surprise but this? The destruction makes Vincent’s jaw drop… along with the sky… the broken sky dressed in arteries and branches of lifestream, holding up floating pieces of land…

Cloud looks at him with disguised pity. “Yeah, so… the world kind of ended while you were sleeping… Long story. We’re… trying to fix it.”

“…Did Hojo cause this?”

“…Honestly, I’m still not clear on all the details, but essentially yeah?” Cloud turns to the ghost for confirmation.

The ghost nods. [I’d say it’s his fault, definitely.]

Vincent growls, the monsters bubbling under his skin wanting to come out and rip, tear, kill. “Where is he? Did he cause this?!”

[He must have, unless…] the ghost frowns, scanning the area, before he somehow becomes even paler. [You’ve got to be kidding me.]

Cloud stands closer to him. “What is it? What do you see?”

There, in the distance, a woman runs back and forth, dodging attacks of impossibly strong magnitude, attacks that take apart buildings and trees in their path. This woman manages to dart around the attacks, her feet nearly getting singed by the edges of them, the ends of her hair definitely singed. She tries to send blasts of fire and thunder towards the man attacking her, a man with silver hair. But the man only swats the attacks away, as if they mean nothing. Vincent’s impressed that she’s managed to stay alive and relatively unharmed so far, but it’s clear her attacks won’t do any good.

The way this man attacks… he’s beyond human. Perhaps beyond the gods themselves.

“Tifa!” Cloud roars, running towards the woman and the silver-haired man with no weapon at all.

[Cloud, wait, at least grab something to fight with!] the ghost chases him.

Vincent moves to follow to, to get his answers, to find Hojo, but another sight distracts him. A sight he hasn’t seen in decades, a sight he thought he lost (first, to Hojo, second, to death) so long ago.

Lucrecia struggles to walk away from the battle, as if invisible chains are pulling her back, glowing like a deity in the lifestream’s green.

Her eyes lock with Vincent’s, and for a moment, time just… stops for him.

He’s young again. Human. He’s in love and foolish. He’d do anything for her.

But the moment breaks when Lucrecia surges towards him, grabbing him, her hands burning his with a single touch, and yet somehow Vincent doesn’t disintegrate from her power.

“Vincent,” she forces her lips to speak out, “please. Help me kill my son.”


	23. The Promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of the 2-part update today. Love you all, really and truly.

The only way to describe fighting Sephiroth right now is pure insanity. Tifa thought she was strong before, prepared. She was the best student Master Zangan ever had. She never neglected a day of her training, even when she was working at Seventh Heaven, except when she was recovering from her accident. But Sephiroth doesn’t even fight like a Soldier anymore or a monster. He fights like something completely alien and beyond humanity.

All of Tifa’s instincts told her to run when her first few punches only made Sephiroth laugh. He shrugged off each of her hits like they were nothing but tiny pokes against his skin.

“I’m impressed by your form and your ferocity,” he had the audacity to say. “If I was still human, still weak-minded, you might be a match for me… as it is… Why don’t I show you?”

Sephiroth just lifted his hand. He didn’t bother pointing his hand at Tifa. No, he directed his hand towards Nibelheim, energy and magic forming in his palm until a giant ball of pure energy was there. Tifa moved towards him, intending to kick his arm, redirect the attack somewhere else but it was like trying to move Mount Nibel itself.

He just laughed and threw the ball of energy towards the town and then… and then…

All those buildings, the old Shinra mansion. Gone. Obliterated, like a bomb had taken out the whole street.

Tifa had never seen such power before.

“Well?” Sephiroth said towards her, like humouring a small animal. “Do you still want to fight me?”

_Cloud, oh god, CloudCloudCloudCloud—_

No. She has to believe in him. She has to believe he’s still alright. Now she really can’t let Sephiroth take his attention off of her. Cloud needs to find the Core Materia first or it’s all over. If Sephiroth manages to attack Nibelheim again…

Tifa launches herself at him, punches flying everywhere. She uses all of her best moves, even the forbidden ones that Master Zangan taught her, the ones that could kill a hundred men or more.

Sephiroth’s eyes flash in amusement as he jumps back, one hand poised behind him, another hand with his sword out as he quickly blocks all of Tifa’s moves. She’s predictable, apparently. She needs to change it up, be unpredictable.

She kicks at the ashes of the flowers below her, a whole stream of them hitting Sephiroth’s face and as soon as he hisses out, the ashes digging into his eyes, she throws her strongest blow to his stomach, satisfied when a bit of blood spits out of his mouth.

She made him bleed, she might be able to do this, she—

And then Sephiroth wipes the ashes from his face and _grins_.

Magic flares up in his hands, the same magic that destroyed Shinra Mansion before, aimed at Tifa, and she begins to dodge for her life.

:

They should never have stopped to confront Hojo. They should have dropped into Nibelheim, grabbed the Core Materia, and gone back to Cosmo Canyon. Maybe then, they wouldn’t have to confront Sephiroth.

Any thoughts that Cloud had, that he could kill Sephiroth, are gone in favour of grabbing Tifa and getting out of here. Neither he nor Tifa are strong enough to fight this kind of being, even together. The man can decimate entire _towns_ and he and Tifa barely survived fighting one Jenova-thing, no thank you, Cloud isn’t _stupid._

Thanks to Zack’s sharp eyes, Cloud manages to find his sword along the way, carrying it behind him as he races towards Tifa, Zack following behind him. Maybe he’ll chuck the sword at Sephiroth’s head as a distraction so he and Tifa can get away. Can Cait Sith fly the airship? They’re going to need Cait Sith to fly the airship, shit, how are they going to get out of here—

Cloud’s getting closer. Tifa’s still dodging Sephiroth’s god-tier attacks that have been forming cracks in the earth, cracks so large that the lifestream peeks out of them, like a layer of green magma exposed from under the earth. But she’s slowing down, getting tired.

_Please hang on, please hang on…!_

She frowns, catching Cloud’s eyes, before she pales, and then determination returns to her. Some sort of plan.

Cloud watches in horror as Tifa decides to run towards Sephiroth, reckless and stupid and brave, throwing her fire spells at the _ground itself,_ the ashes scattered around Sephiroth, until a wall of flame separates her from him. She rushes around the wall of flames, taking advantage of Sephiroth’s distraction and leaps over it because she’s crazy and she lives to give Cloud heart attacks, kicking Sephiroth in the back of the head, making him fall over.

“Run!” Tifa yells at Cloud, all of that work, as a distraction, to protect him, because now Cloud sees that Tifa doesn’t even care what happens to herself.

“No!”

He’s not leaving her. He promised. He runs towards the fire for her—

Everything happens so slow and fast, all at once.

Tifa only sees Cloud, her head shaking as she yells at him to get away. Cloud only sees Tifa, his hand outstretched, regardless of the flames, wanting to reach her when he’s so far away.

Neither of them see Sephiroth, who moves within the blink of an eye, skewering his sword through Tifa’s stomach.

It’s an image that Cloud can’t reconcile in his brain. Tifa, pale, blood dribbling from her lips, her own hands reaching for Cloud, as if she can’t see the sword piercing through her body. The blade, stained with her blood, quickly slashing out of her with one clean swoop.

Sephiroth, with his back turned, who cannot see Cloud trembling with rage/denial/nononono, his own sword raised.

For a moment, Tifa stands, the darkening and sickening red in her stomach growing like some disease. And then, despite everything, she tries to smile at him. She _dares_ , when there’s so much red staining her lips, she _dares_ to comfort him… and then a sway, the wind perhaps, pushing her back… and back… and back to the ashen ground—

Cloud has never been so angry, not even when Tifa fell and her father blamed him and Cloud began beating up the boys in the village. He throws his sword across Sephiroth’s neck, he knows his head has fallen to the ground, somehow he also knows that it won’t kill Sephiroth. Not really. And he doesn’t care. He slashes up Sephiroth’s body again and again, aware that this is the coward’s way to kill, from behind, but he doesn’t care.

He throws the sword away while the bits of Sephiroth begin to crawl towards each other, to the main body, in such twisted array. The damned man won’t stay dead, but it doesn’t matter. Not when Tifa is lying so still and cold on the ground where flowers used to grow.

“Tifa,” Cloud falls to his knees, “Tifa… _Tifa_ …” He crawls to her, cradling her against his chest.

Below them, the earth shakes, the cracks from Sephiroth’s attacks growing larger… the lifestream peeking out more and more… threatening to flood over what’s left of Nibelheim.

He holds her close, their faces squished together, until Cloud feels her faint breaths… she’s alive… he… he needs to heal her. But he threw his sword away… he should… he should get up and get it, but he can’t leave her, not again, he _promised_ —

[Cloud, Cloud, I know you’re upset, but you need to get up. Sephiroth’s putting himself back together _really_ fast and it is honestly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,] Zack mutters.

“No,” Cloud shakes his head against Tifa’s hair. “You tell Cait Sith to take off. I’m not leaving her.”

[At least _try_ to get up! She’s not dead yet, don’t you give up— _holy shit!_ ]

Cloud barely has time to roll over, covering Tifa, as they narrowly dodge another blast from Sephiroth’s magic. Zack gapes, his form more see-through as he stares at Sephiroth, only the torso attached to the head and arms… his legs still slowly crawling back towards his body.

Sephiroth narrows his eyes. “I won’t miss next time.” He shifts his hand towards Cloud and Tifa, and Cloud has no time to worry about Tifa’s wounds growing larger, as he covers all of her with his body—

“ _You won’t touch my friends!_ ” Cait Sith lands on top of Sephiroth’s head, his little body poking at Sephiroth’s face and eyes.

The Core Materia on Cait Sith’s back goes flying towards Cloud.

[Cait Sith, what the hell?! You were supposed to go to the ship!] Zack yells.

“What and I let him kill Tifa and Cloud?! Not a chance! I’m a robot, I don’t count as a living thing. Just tell them to run!” Cait Sith hisses.

[This isn’t the time to be a hero! You were their only chance of escaping! They won’t be able to escape Sephiroth now! They needed that airship! Fuck, where’s that Vincent guy, I thought he was supposed to be helping us! Of all the time for me to be _dead_ , fuck!]

…They’re all going to die, Cloud thinks faintly, as Tifa’s heartbeat begins to slow, as her blood stains his entire body. The Core Materia still hasn’t left Nibelheim and there’s no way to escape…

Tifa’s eyes, in pain and not quite aware, flutter up at him. “Cloud…” she whispers, like she’s glad to see him one last time, like there’s something still _good_ to be found in this hellish situation, and Cloud thinks that if he’s with her in the end, then life wasn’t so bad.

Slowly, her eyes point up towards the crack in the air… the lifestream… stretching out towards Aerith… _connected to Aerith._

Cloud’s eyes widen. “You… you want to jump in there? With the Core Materia… bring it to Aerith…”

She manages another smile. “S’how the Jenova-thing is travelling… We’re closer to the centre than It is though…”

“But… you’ll die! You don’t _know_ what will happen to you if you go in there, even with the Core Materia.”

Her smile could break him. “S’fine… M’dying anyways… I don’t mind dying for this… You… you need to live…”

Cloud starts to shake, to tremble. And then, his world feels clear. There’s only one thing to do. “No,” he says. “I’m coming with you.”

Tifa frowns. “Cloud…”

“We _promised_. Whatever we do for the future, we’re doing it together. Always.”

Tifa searches his gaze. In the background, whatever Cait Sith and Zack are doing to buy them time, all of that fades when Cloud looks at her face.

“…Alright,” her voice cracks. “Together.”

He gets up quickly, picking up the fallen Core Materia, and then gathers Tifa up in his arms. She hooks her arms around his neck, as he rushes to the edge, the crack in the land where the lifestream is rising up. The lifestream’s bright green stares back up at him, along with all the faces of the dead, watching.

“…So, in case we don’t make it through this… do I get to know your secret?” Cloud asks, trying to buy more time together. Anything moments at all.

Tifa coughs, the red dribbling down her neck, her breaths so wary and still so gentle. “Does it need to be said anymore?”

No, Cloud supposes it doesn’t. They don’t have any more time.

They’re together, in the end, just as they promised.

And together, Cloud jumps with Tifa in his arms… into the lifestream.

**Interlude: Cait Sith**

Can a robot fear dying? Cait Sith has never really wondered that before. But in this world where no more Cait Siths will ever be made, he wonders.

Sephiroth can’t do much when his legs haven’t come back to him yet and Cait Sith makes sure that Sephiroth can’t see, clings with his little claws to Sephiroth’s face.

Zack’s yelling something, hopefully a plan to Cloud and Tifa. It’s all Cait Sith can do to hold on.

And then he hears another sound, roars. Two of them. No, three?

Cait Sith opens his eyes and sees Lucrecia, being carried by some sort of monster with a red cloak… and behind them… Zack? No, not quite Zack, some terrible combination of Zack and monster stitched up together, chasing them.

[Seriously?!] Zack hisses, gesturing wildly at the situation. [ _Now_ my body decides to wake up and I can’t even go back to it?!]

That’s the moment that Cloud and Tifa jump into the lifestream. That’s the moment, Sephiroth manages to swat Cait Sith off of his face.

The last thing Cait Sith thinks as Sephiroth’s attack rips him into wires and pieces is that at least he was useful in the end.

At least he made his peace with Tifa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that awkward moment when your party realizes that they are still at level 10 because they haven't bothered to level up more and the final boss just showed up early and he's like level 99+ and oh, wow, escaping looks good
> 
> pleasedontkillme


	24. His Reason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished my project for my training course! Have a new chapter, I love you all!

He’s a Shinra employee, who’s been stuck in the same village, pretending to be normal, and then there _is_ no normal anymore, he should have left, but the meteor came and there’s nowhere to run—

He’s a young child, who climbed up Mount Nibel on a dare and then he’s falling and falling—

He’s a doctor who has saved so many lives, but his limbs are worn, and his skin wrinkled, and there’s nothing more that he would like than to reunite with his wife, and he’s so tired—

He’s a killer who gets backstabbed by his partner and thrown into a dumpster to rot, buried by garbage until he chokes, thinking of useless revenge as if it will keep him alive—

No, _no_ , he’s not any of those things. Cloud has never been a doctor or a killer (not that kind of killer, the kind who revels in the violence of it all as if human lives are ever a game.) This isn’t him. Where is he? He’s… alone.

He’s… not supposed to be alone. He’s… trying to put something back together (but what?) and he can’t do it without her.

Wait.

Who… who is ‘her’? He _aches_. He’s never supposed to forget her, even when they were far apart, he carried her in his heart. Even when he knew that she couldn’t care about him the same way he did her, he treasured the feel of her smile in his soul. He… he made a promise, etched that promise into every ounce of his being until it became his _reason_ and… and he can’t remember it… It was _so important_ , and he can only grasp the general structure of it but not the inside—

He curls up in the darkness, trying to shut out all the screams around him. So many souls in agony all around and yet he can’t see them, only get the tidal waves of their beings, their very memories, invading Cloud’s own soul, wading in and out, so many voices, so many tragedies and triumphs, so many—

“…Hey,” a tiny hand touches his shoulder. “Are you lost?”

In that touch, suddenly all the other voices, all the other screams and souls, go quiet. Cloud is blessed alone, save for that small hand, and when he looks up, he nearly forgets how to be.

Tifa. That’s the precious name he’d whisper to himself, until she became some ideal in his head, until he went to get her and the real woman behind the name was so much better than he ever imagined—

But she’s small. Young. That white dress, with the cute little black bow that drove Cloud crazy, that he couldn’t take his eyes away from, that he wanted to unravel and use to tie her closer to him—

Eight-year-old Tifa stares up at him with that same pouty look, as if she stepped out of his head.

Cloud can’t stop staring back.

“It’s rude not to answer, you know,” she says with the same little voice he remembers.

“…Are you real?” he blurts out.

“Of course, I’m real! Look!” Little Tifa presents her hand outstretched in front of him, palm up. She looks so much like his Tifa, who would always ask him to play (she was the only one who would, and who kept doing it) but Cloud would always be afraid to take her hand. He didn’t think he’d be as interesting as her other friends, he didn’t think that they’d welcome him near Tifa. He didn’t think he was good enough for her and he just, never took it, never stepped forward, and _look at all those years he wasted—_

Face falling, little Tifa drops her hand.

“Wai—”

“She’s waiting for you, you know,” the little memory says, looking away from him (please don’t look away—) “Your Tifa.”

Cloud nearly falls over. “Tifa?! She’s here? Where is she? Why can’t I find her?”

“The Lifestream’s currents were too strong. You let go and she got lost. She sent her memories to protect you. That’s why I’m here,” the little memory says proudly.

Cloud nearly swears, but the presence of this little Tifa makes him bite his tongue. “Then what’s protecting _her?!_ ”

“Oh,” little Tifa’s face falls. “I don’t think she thought about that.”

Tifa never thinks about herself.

Cloud gets up, taking the little memory’s hand. “We need to go find her _right now_.”

The little memory stares up at him, eyes wide. “I… no. Tifa wants to keep you safe. She’s… she’s dying. She doesn’t think she has any time left…”

“Then I need to see her!” Cloud stops when he sees the little memory flinch.

What in the world is he doing? In front of him, is a version of Tifa too… a part of her memories, a part of herself she sent to him. He has to cherish her. Quietly, he kneels down before her, like a wandering rogue about to swear loyalty to a lost princess.

“Please. You know how important this is to us. We made a promise.”

The little memory’s lips wobble as she tries to smile. Tifa’s always doing that, even when she’s in pain. Even when she’s dying.

“…That we’ll be together, right?”

Cloud reaches up to hold her hands. “Yeah…” he says softly, wishing he had told her this when they were small. “To be together.”

The little memory sniffs, rubbing tears out of the corner of her eye before she nods, determined. “I’ll show you the way,” she tells him, holding his hand tight. “Don’t let go.”

“I won’t,” he promises.

This is the third promise he’ll make to her. Even if she doesn’t know it. He won’t let go again.

:

The lifestream is dark and barren. As long as Cloud holds the little memory’s hand, he can’t hear the screams of the souls trying to keep the world from falling apart. All of the green, the soothing shade that nudges life into all souls, seems to be have been sucked out dry.

“Jenova and Sephiroth are taking the vitality out of the lifestream,” the little memory confirms when Cloud asks her. “All the green is gathering to the center, for a last stand. I guess we’re in the skeleton of the lifestream? We should hurry though… I think Sephiroth dove in too… He’ll catch up to us.”

Cloud tightens his hold on her hand. “No. Not if I can help it.”

They pass by so many little memories. Cloud catches glimpses of a young Tifa playing piano and giggling as her mother tickles her, a young Tifa showing off some cool leaves she found to her father. Then he blinks and the images change, Tifa crying by herself as her father stumbles drunkenly to his room, Tifa falling off Mount Nibel while the last thing she sees is Cloud reaching for her, Tifa glancing at Cloud’s window and flying paper airplanes across to give him messages… messages that always flew away or that Cloud would never read. Tifa waiting for Cloud at the water tower and disappointed that Cloud will leave her like everyone leaves (Dad too drunk, but willing to act ‘normal’ during the day to keep up appearances, Mom dead, Master Zangan who could move on to a new village at any moment now.)

The little memory keeps tugging Cloud’s hand, walking briskly past all these scenes, while Cloud wants to linger in the gallery of Tifa and soak in what he can. But no, they don’t have any more time. Besides, isn’t it better if Tifa tells him about this herself?

The memories get darker the closer they get. Cloud sees the fire in Nibelheim, that bastard Sephiroth killing Tifa’s father, Tifa trying to kill Sephiroth. Then Midgar. And with Midgar, Tifa struggling to find meaning in her life (everyone is gone, I’m useless, I can’t do _anything_ , she thinks, and Cloud wants so say _no, no, you’re so precious_.) She fights in underground fighting rings for money. She acts as a bouncer. She picks up bar-tending. She runs into Barret and Marlene, and with them, she gets a purpose.

She pours all of herself into that purpose. Avalanche, Marlene, Barret, Marle, eventually Aerith—they all become Tifa’s reason to live. She’d do anything for them. She doesn’t matter, as long as Avalanche can overthrow Shinra, as long as Marlene grows up happy and healthy, as long as Barret gets to keep smiling, as long as Aerith finds her purpose, as long as Marle keeps living. Tifa will be there for them.

And then Aerith’s kidnapped.

And they’re imprisoned.

And all Tifa can think is that Aerith has to live, Aerith is so much more important that lonely little Tifa who has no one who will miss her, Aerith is a Cetra, Aerith will fix the world. No one needs Tifa to do that.

So it’s easy for Tifa to fight with reckless abandon. It’s easy for Tifa to get in the way of the attack meant for Aerith. It’s so easy for her to yell at Barret and Aerith to leave her behind when really all she wanted was for them to save her too, but she couldn’t be selfish—

Then Tifa’s bed-bound.

But her friends are alive. She served her purpose. She still has Marle, at least.

Her days are dull again, mechanical. She trains as she used to, she waits for Barret and Aerith to call her, to ask for her help.

They never do.

Because the world ends.

And Tifa should seek out Marle, she shouldn’t be alone when it’s all ending, she knows that, but she can’t help the cold sensations that fill her, that she deserves this, that she didn’t do enough to help Aerith and Barret until—

Cloud.

He’s there. He’s… everywhere. Nothing like the boy she knew and yet _everything_ like him, and he gathers her in her arms, and kisses her like she means something, and Tifa melts into him because at least she has this before it ends—

Cloud is like… sunshine to Tifa. Everything he does, makes her want to be stronger, makes her feel anchored, more herself. She can’t believe he’s here with her, with that same steady kindness that she was drawn too since they were kids, and this distance she can’t cross.

She wants to ask why he came for her, she wants to ask if he missed her over the years, she wants to ask if he thought of her as much as she thought of him, but this isn’t the time for that, there are more important things to worry about—

It’s enough that he’s here with her.

It’s always been enough.

“Cloud?”

He’s jolted out of the draw of Tifa’s memories, the ones that leak out adoration and longing, by the tug of the little memory’s hand in his.

The little memory frowns at him. “Remember, those aren’t your memories! Don’t get lost in them or how will you help your Tifa?”

“R-right,” Cloud shakes off the strength of that scene, the way Tifa sees him… He… he doesn’t deserve it.

(But maybe Love isn’t something that’s supposed to be ‘deserved.’ Maybe… it just is.)

The little memory hisses, clutching at her head.

“What’s wrong?” Cloud asks immediately, as the little memory’s hand begins to fade in and out. “Are you alright? Talk to me!”

“She… _I’m_ … dying… Not much time…”

Cloud doesn’t hesitate. Tifa never has, so he won’t either. He scoops up the little memory in his arms and begins running in the direction she points, past the scenes of Tifa singing to Cloud, past the scenes of Tifa and Cloud curled up together, past the scenes of Tifa reliving her worst nightmares.

 _I’m here, I’m here, I won’t go, so please stay,_ he thinks, as if his soul might touch hers, as if his voice might reach her.

Then, there, lying in a circle of darkness, surrounded by her worst memories, he sees Tifa bleeding out alone.

The little memory in Cloud’s arms gives him one last wary smile before she disappears, slipping through his fingers, and Cloud has no time to mourn her as he rushes to Tifa’s side.

“Tifa!” He cradles her head carefully into the crook of his arm. She’s so cold, only the ghost of warmth lingering now… He hasn’t seen her this pale since Mount Nibel, when he was small and weak and couldn’t do anything. Look at him now. Almost a full-fledged SOLDIER, and still he can’t save her. “Tifa, please! Wake up!”

Her lips remain unmoving. Her pulse has gone.

“No. No, please. Tifa, I can’t do this without you. I’m not strong at all, I’m only strong when I’m with you,” he curls up around her, as if that will stop her from bleeding. “I can’t find my way without you.”

 _That’s not true_ , he imagines her saying to him. _You grew so much without me_.

“And it was empty,” Cloud whispers against her hair. “I lived but I was so empty inside… And then there was you. Tifa, my whole life, _you_ were my reason. You _still are_ …”

Still no heart beat. No breaths.

“Fuck!” Cloud wants to beat his arms against some tangible monster, something to defeat so Tifa will breathe again. But there’s nothing here to fight. Just a void of dead screams and souls tugging at piece of a planet that will never move back together again. “This is the lifestream, isn’t it?!” Cloud yells into the void, at the souls too busy fighting to hear him. “Full of mako! Just… _do something!_ If there was anyone out there who loved her like I do, just _do something and save her!_ ”

But no one comes. No one hears. All of the dead are too busy trying to save the living to pay attention to the two souls that have fallen into their realm.

Cloud wants to curse his own selfishness.

“Think, Strife, think,” he can’t rely on anyone else right now. He’s alone and Tifa’s getting colder. “I’m out of cure materia… Materia holds mako. All life has mako energy in it… all life…”

Like Cloud’s.

Cloud’s life.

He… he has mako in him, from the experiments, but also his own vitality. If it’s possible, in the lifestream of all places, he could place a little bit of his mako into Tifa. Maybe heal her.

(Or he’s a fool with fairy tales in his head.)

But Cloud has nothing else to lose.

With one last caress over her cheek, he lifts her up into a desperate kiss. The cold of her lips jolts through his nerves, but all Cloud can think of is the feeling of using materia, how energy surges through him from the materia in his weapon, up through his body until it’s like he’s a conductor of magic, mako surging from his body into the battlefield. He tries tapping into that now, tries focusing now on a concentrated ball of mako trapped within materia, but his own life force, the feel of mako within his veins…

 _Please, please save her_ , he presses his lips closer to hers, _just this once, let me save her_.

He thinks he sees sparks of green around him, familiar whispers, his mother’s warm touch against his cheek, and then—

The next thing Cloud knows—

Tifa gasps awake, sparks of green flying around her like fireflies dancing because she’s alive. The sparks of green fly around Cloud too, brightening the dark void around them. For a moment, Cloud thinks he sees his mother… before the green sparks dissipate into formless shapes once more and Cloud focuses on checking on Tifa’s wounds.

All of them are closed. She’s breathing and staring at Cloud with that same wonder and—

Oh.

“You love me,” Cloud realizes.

He’s greeted with the delightful sight of Tifa turning completely red. “Wh-what?! I didn’t say… I… Is this a dream?! I thought I was dead!”

“No,” Cloud holds her tighter. “Not dead. And you won’t be dying anytime soon, I’m not letting you go. Don’t _do_ that, Tifa. Don’t just sacrifice yourself because you think you’re not important—”

“Cloud,” she stares at him, dazed and confused, “I don’t under—”

“Don’t you get it?” Cloud continues desperately. “You’re my reason! For fighting, for living, all of it. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved you! I still love you. Always. I came back to Midgar for _you_.”

Tifa’s eyes well up in disbelief. “You… love me.”

“Yeah…”

God, Cloud wants to laugh. They’re both so stupid. They’ve both wasted so much time.

Speaking of time…

They both turn to the strange rumbling in the distance, to strange red flashes far off in the lifestream. Sephiroth, coming for them. Coming for Aerith.

Cloud clutches at the Core Materia in his pocket and meets Tifa’s eyes.

They have a job to do.

“Please…” Cloud clutches at her hand, “don’t go rushing into death. I can’t… I can’t handle that.”

Tifa leans against him, her head against his heart. “I won’t. I promise. You… You’re _my_ reason too.”

He wants to say so much, so many more _I love you_ s. A lifetime of them and more. But they have a world to put back together.

And as long as he’s here, he’s going to keep Tifa breathing.

**Interlude: Cid**

“Wallace, you’re a moron,” Cid hisses again, as he flies the _Highwind_ towards Cosmo Canyon.

Sitting on the floor of the deck, minus his gun-arm, and a Core Materia in his other hand, Barret only collapses in weary laughter. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

[Who the hell just rushes at the monster that ended the world, tries to shoot him in the face and then somehow swipes the Core Materia from him, _rips off his gun-arm_ , and escapes?! Huh?! Who!? You’re lucky that Sephiroth didn’t seem interested in chasing you down, going god knows where instead,] Myrna scolds him, [I thought I was going to die a second time because of your recklessness!]

“I’m… really sorry about that, Myrna, it was the only way…” Barret sobers up.

Myrna sighs but nods. [I know. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.]

The tender look Barret gives her makes Cid look away. Shera used to look at Cid like that. Speaking of Shera, she’s made herself as small as possible, studying maps and the ship’s controls.

“Nanaki,” Cid barks at him. “You pilot. I gotta go talk to Shera.”

“Huh? But, Cid-san, I have _paws_ and—”

“Hey, I heard from Yuffie that you walked around on hind legs for an entire boat ride, dressed as a Shinra sailor once. Figure it out!”

“Why can’t Yuffie do it?!”

“Because I don’t trust her and she’ll throw up before we all crash to a fiery death, that’s why. Now fly.”

Nanaki’s a smart kid, he’ll figure it out. Cid’s seen Nanaki carefully watching how Cid flies the ship. Besides, it’s on autopilot, really _fast speed_ autopilot. S’funnier to see the kid panic before he realizes that Cid only needs someone to monitor the controls.

The closer Cid gets to Shera, the more her shoulders tense… Cid’s too, if he’s being honest. There’s so much shit he has to apologize for, so much that he thought he would never atone for, because… well… he thought she was dead.

But she’s not now. And despite the grime and the blood all over her clothes… she’s beautiful.

“…Shera?” he asks gruffly, trying not to act like ‘before.’

She doesn’t turn around.

Cid probably deserves that.

“Listen… I just… there’s so much I have to apologize for—”

“I didn’t think you’d come for me,” she whispers.

Those words stab at him more than losing his chance to fly did. Shera’s always believed in him, even when he was an ass, even when he called her terrible names and didn’t listen to her…

“…I probably deserve that. But Shera, I’ll spend the rest of our lives, however long that is, making up for it. If I’m an ass in the future, don’t tolerate it. Leave me. But please, don’t ever think I wouldn’t come for you. I’ll always come for you.”

Her shoulders are shaking the way they always do when she cries. Before, Cid never did anything about it. He had thought she deserved it. Now, he wishes he could kick his past self’s ass.

Tentatively, he puts a hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t lean into his touch, but she doesn’t shrug it away either.

That’s… something.

“Uh, Cid?” Yuffie calls out. “Something you should look at over here!”

“ _What_ ,” Cid scowls. “Better be important!”

His cigarette falls to the floor.

Outside, almost all the branches of the lifestream have turned red… steadily chasing towards the center.

They’re running out of time.

**Author's Note:**

> Always happy to get prompts at my [twitter](https://twitter.com/youlightthesky1), my [writing tumblr](http://youlighttheskyfanfiction.tumblr.com/), or my [art tumblr](https://youlighttheskyart.tumblr.com/) I also have a [ pillowfort ](https://www.pillowfort.social/youlighttheskyfanfiction) now where I will put more reflections on my teaching and writing. Aka, what my writing tumblr should have been ahaha
> 
> Cover art for the fic is [here](https://youlighttheskyart.tumblr.com/post/623944770970124288/cover-art-for-my-fic-meteor-seeds-summary)


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